


Under

by Klitch



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Demonic Possession, Harlequin, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:47:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klitch/pseuds/Klitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a thousand years Kurogane has died every night at the hands of a demon and awoken every morning alive again. A stranger offers him the chance at a cure, but who can trust a strange mad prisoner who hears voices in his head?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shallow Grave

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Dreamwidth KuroFai Harlequin challenge. Original Prompt: "Every night for thousands of years, he has been murdered and sent to the fires of hell… Cursed by the gods, bound to a rage-filled spirit he can barely control, Maddox has all but forgotten his humanity – until Ashlyn Darrow comes to his prison in Budapest seeking help. Maddox finds his anger is soothed by her presence. But he can't help question why a beautiful innocent has come looking for the Lords of the Underworld. Ashlyn is tortured by voices from the past – and her knowledge might be enough to free Maddox from his death-curse. When an extreme sacrifice is demanded, will Maddox's superhuman strength be enough to save them both?" I kinda have no idea what's going on in this fic. There was a lot of "Isn't that a bit much? Wait, who cares, harlequin fic!" Yeah. New chapters will be posted as I finish editing them.

_"Don't move, kid. This will hurt."_

_The reassuring voice did nothing to soothe him as the sword ran across his palm, drawing a bright line of red blood. His father grasped his hand tight, letting the blood stain his palm. His father's face was grim and determined despite its thinness. The dragon tattoo on his face was moving, twitching as though there was a snake living under his skin._

_Then there was a rush of air and pain and his entire body felt as though it was on fire and he realized that he had fallen to his knees. He didn't understand why this was happening. There was a voice in his head that wasn't his own and he could smell something burning in the distance._

_His father's skin was turning gray before his eyes, fingers already pitch-black as if he had dipped them in ashes. Normally it took weeks for victims of the plague to show such advanced symptoms but it all seemed to be happening to his father at once, skin going dead, the whites of the eyes turning a sickly yellow with a red ring around the iris and still there was a smile on his face twisting like a knife—_

— _His mother's knife, small, ceremonial, sticking into his father's gut and then slicing apart his father's throat, red blood raining down all over her small hands. She turned back to look at him, smiling crookedly, her skin too white but not gray, not black around the fingers. The plague had gotten his father at last, but it had never yet touched her. Tsukuyomi's medallion hung loosely around her neck, stained red like a sacrifice._

_She staggered towards him, coughing blood from her lips as she touched his face gently and said something he had never been able to remember over the blood pounding in his ears and the screaming in his head. She reached for him and held him close to her chest._

_And then her knife plunged down into his back._

_o-o_

Kurogane did not wake with a scream. He never did, these days. There were only so many times one could have the same nightmare in a thousand years before it ceased to frighten. Not that it was, in fact, a nightmare. It was far too real to be a nightmare and besides he could feel the blood drying along his back. All told, this one had not been too bad, not compared to some of the others. Sometimes he had to kill his mother with his bare hands. Other times both mother and father held him down and placed _it_ inside him, laughing as he screamed. Sometimes he didn't see them at all, only fire and a destroyed town and corpses everywhere, riddled with plague and reaching out to him. Visions too real to be mere dreams, but too frenzied to be truth.

 _Such a delicious thought,_ the thing in his mind whispered, snickering. _Burn it all down and watch them die again, while you lie helpless. It would be a relief to you, wouldn't it?_

"Shut up," Kurogane said, the reaction as natural as breathing by now. _It_ simply laughed at him and retreated into the back of his mind, a small spark of rage that would, as always, slowly worm its way into his mind until it eventually became a bonfire.

It had no name, but allowed him to call it Erebus. It was a demon, of that much he was sure, though he had never been able to find any concrete information on it in any text he had ever unearthed — and he had certainly looked, in that first hundred or so years before he resigned himself to his fate. It fed off rage and hate, constantly whispering words of destruction in his ears, making even the mildest of irritations into a desire for murder and blood.

And every night when the last light of the sun disappeared the demon would fight and claw its way out of his body, tearing through flesh, ripping organs as though they were tissue paper, shattering ribs and bones as it fought to escape the prison of his body. Every night Kurogane died and was consigned to the torturous depths of the underworld to dream of pain and horror, and every morning he awoke alive and whole with a demon still singing in his head. The cycle had gone on for hundreds of years now, ever since the day his father had placed the damned thing inside of him.

The first few hundred years he had cursed his fate, had tried desperately to find a way to save himself. He had gone to exorcists, priests, had traveled the world in search of a spell or ritual that could expel the demon from his body. He had cursed his fate, cursed the gods, cursed his father for betraying him this way. He had tried to kill himself in hundreds of ways, only to wake up every morning still alive and still possessed.

After nearly a thousand years the cursing and pain had given way to a sense of irritated, familiar boredom. There were only so many times one could be sent to hell and back before it took on the patina of routine. Kurogane remembered a priest he had met once back a century or two ago, who preached "the tortures of hell are infinite." Having personally lived through thousands of them, Kurogane could only assume the priest had meant in length rather than scope. In practice, the tortures of hell got rather boring after the three thousandth nightly visit.

Kurogane stood stiffly, ignoring the sound of the demon laughing still in the back of his mind. The room was a mess, _again,_ but that was why he rarely kept anything of value there anyway. Chains hung loosely from the wall, the locks broken, and Kurogane thought idly that he'd need to find something more complicated. Though he couldn't stop the demon from tearing its way out of his body, he _could_ hinder it in various ways. Locks were the easiest. The demon had strength beyond that of a normal human, strength which Kurogane himself could tap into if he so chose, but even it had difficulty with strong metal chains and it had no patience for locks. Kurogane had begun to get a bizarre sort of satisfaction by purchasing increasingly more complicated locks just to piss the demon off.

Even on the rare occasions when Erebus broke the locks it never went far. Kurogane's room was the most secure in the entire building, which was saying something considering he lived in the darkest, most miserable prison on the entire continent.

He hadn't intended this to be his home. Some fifty years ago some bastard in glasses had come to him in the middle of the slum where he was eking out a living using his unearthly strength for manual labor and hiding out nights in the forest, hoping Erebus would be sated by deer and rabbits, and had offered him a job.

"The choice is yours," he had been told, but really there had been no choice. He was sick of living off rats and the remains of Erebus's nightly feedings and of hiding out nights in abandoned buildings and empty fields, hoping that when he woke there wouldn't be a corpse lying beside him. The Hole may have been dark and foreboding, but it was secure and offered three meals a day and the image of a respectable job.

It wasn't called the Hole formally, of course, but that was what the prisoners called it and therefore what Kurogane had begun calling it as well. There were a handful of guards and none were there of their own choice — they were all the scraps of society, homeless men and bastard sons and exiles of foreign countries with nowhere else to go. They lived in the town at the foot of the hill with the prison looking down on them. As warden Kurogane alone remained living in the prison, surrounded only by the prisoners themselves — all of them murderers and rapists and the worst kind of scum, most of them half mad even before they arrived. The bars of their cells were enough to keep Erebus out should it ever manage to escape Kurogane's room, but even so all were aware that any prisoner fool enough to attempt escape after dark would likely never be seen again. Not in one piece with all the flesh still on, anyway.

 _And wouldn't they all deserve it?_ Erebus snickered. Its voice in his mind was like a reptile in the sun, coiling and uncoiling.

Not bothering to fix the mess he'd made of the room, Kurogane undid the multiple locks on the doors and stepped into his _real_ room, the one where he kept everything of importance. Including his clothes, as he'd learned the hard way that there was no point in wearing decent clothes at sunset when they were just going to be rags by morning.

As he stepped into the room his eyes were drawn as always to the sword hanging on the wall. Like many of the things Kurogane owned, it was wrapped in chains and locked tight. Even as he stared at it Kurogane's fingers itched to hold it again, to feel it in his grip. He mentally clamped down on the feeling and turned away. He couldn't trust himself with Ginryuu, not anymore. The last time he'd held the sword….he didn't even remember now, not really.

Ginryuu was a sword of protection in any case, and he had no business protecting anyone. Kurogane kept his gaze away from the wall as he retrieved his clothes and began dressing.

A sound from outside caught his attention and he turned to stare idly out the window. Through the bars — of course the window was barred, this was a prison and Kurogane was never completely sure if he was warden or prisoner here — he could see a black carriage making its way up the hill, passing through the barred gates of the prison.

If the guards had let the carriage through that could mean only one thing: a new prisoner. Kurogane scowled. He hadn't been informed of any new prisoners arriving, and most of the cells were full at the moment. Some bureaucratic idiot must have sent this prisoner down, assuming Kurogane would make room without needing any warning.

The carriage door was barred and locked, but as Kurogane watched two men clothed in black jumped down from the driver's seat and began to unlock the door. One waved to the guards standing outside the prison and they stepped forward to help as the first man slowly pulled away the last lock. A figure all but fell out of the door, all black ragged clothes and messy blond hair, covered in chains from head to toe, his arms locked behind his back and head down. As the guards began to drag him forward the man stirred just slightly and turned his head upwards.

Though Kurogane was certain there was no way he could be seen through the barred windows, he could swear the chained man had smiled at him.

o-o

"I won't do it," Kurogane growled, arms crossed. Erebus paced restlessly in the back of his mind, like a feral cat in a zoo trying to figure out how to break through the bars.

"We apologize for the sudden intrusion," the man in front of his said in oily tones, bowing low. He was one of the two who had arrived with the new prisoner and already Kurogane had forgotten his name. The man had black hair, white skin, gray eyes and the most utterly forgettable face Kurogane had ever seen (which was saying something considering his current lifespan). "It was, how do you say, an _emergency_ of sorts. The prisoner had to come here. None other could hold him."

Kurogane snorted in disbelief. He'd only caught the briefest glimpse of the new prisoner as the guards had dragged him in and what he'd seen had been thin and pale, dragged down by the weight of chains.

"He's mad, you see," the man continued. "We couldn't leave him with the other prisoners. And with the overcrowding…"

"I'm short on space here, too," Kurogane said sharply.

"Understood, of course," the man said, bowing again. There was something slimy about him that Kurogane didn't like. Erebus was whispering into his ears about various decorative things that could be done with the man's intestines. "But orders are orders. You understand."

"I'm not taking in some madman criminal because you can't figure out anywhere else to put him."

"I would be happy to take him back _,_ of course, but you see this was an order and I must do as I'm told," the man continued, all falsely apologetic. The intestine decorations were sounding more appealing all the time. "You are aware, I imagine, that this prison is only one of a vast network that span the country. I was sent from the main prison in the capitol by the governor himself, in the belief that such a small, provincial prison as yours would be glad to have more inmates."

"This is not just any prison," Kurogane said derisively. "Your governor should know that."

"Nonetheless, you will have to take up with my master if you wish to have the prisoner transferred. I would be happy to convey a message to him, if you so desire…"

"The hell you will," Kurogane snapped. He sighed. "All right. _For now_ , he stays here. But I want him out as soon as possible. I don't care if you have to shut him in the damn governor's closet, he can't stay here forever. So what did he do, exactly? I don't care how damn overcrowded the other prisons are, I'm not taking in some poor crazy bastard who just got caught stealing a purse from some rich politician or any crap like that. I told you, this isn't that kind of prison."

"All you need to know has been lined out in the report," the man said. "My companion has given it to one of your subordinates. If you'll excuse me, we must be going. We are to be back in the capitol by nightfall and there is far to go. Should you have any further questions, simply send a missive and we will respond as soon as we are able." He gave Kurogane another oily bow as he backed out of the room. Kurogane watched him go with thinly veiled disgust as he went back to his desk, staring balefully at the pile of paperwork that had begun accumulating there.

"Sir?" He had barely begun digging through the pile when one of the guards carefully poked his head in. They all learned early that startling Kurogane was not a good idea if one wanted to keep one's head atop one's shoulders.

"What?" Kurogane snapped, irritable. He hadn't expected being warden to involve so much damn paperwork and he sure as hell would have never taken this job if the spectacled bastard had told him he was going to be a glorified secretary.

"We have the prisoner secured, sir," the guard said with a quick salute.

"Did you find a cell for him?"

"The men who brought him said he was not to mingle with the rest of the prisoners," the guard reported. "We've placed him in solitary for now. It was all we could find."

"Fine, fine," Kurogane said. "I don't care where the hell you put him, as long as he's locked up."

"The men who brought him have left," the guard continued. "I've got the report they left with me here." He handed Kurogane a small stack of papers before taking his leave.

Left alone with the report, Kurogane leaned back in his chair and gave it a quick perusal. The first page was singularly unhelpful, containing only the prisoner's name and a signed note from the governor ordering his transfer. Kurogane turned to the next page, idly wondering what sort of crime _this_ prisoner had committed, and then swore.

The second page was completely blank. Kurogane angrily turned to the next page but it too was simply an empty sheet of paper. The entire 'report' was nothing but scrap paper, save the first page.

"Damn amateurs," Kurogane muttered. What sort of idiot couldn't even write a report correctly? Now he'd have to send someone down to the transferring prison to get a proper report, which could take days. This was why he hated prisoner transfers. They were always, without question, a pain.

 _I could handle them for you, if you'd like,_ the demon sniggered, which only served to make Kurogane's mood worse. He _hated_ when the damn thing sniggered.

Unable to get any more information from the report, Kurogane stood and left his office. Very well. He could get the information from the stupid prisoner himself, then. He needed to check in on the new arrival anyway. After all, if the man made any sort of attempt to cause trouble and got himself eaten by Erebus at least no one could say that Kurogane hadn't warned him.

The Hole was set up in such a way that Kurogane's quarters and his office were on the second floor with the guards' quarters, the kitchen and all other such areas on ground floor. The actual 'prison' part of the prison was built so that it was in fact underground, like an enormous cellar. Stone staircases led from the ground floor to the prisoners' cells, with lamps all along the wall to keep the way lit. There were no windows and the air always felt stale and strangely thick the deeper one went down. The entire place smelled of rot and death and something beyond that, something deeper and older and fouler that only made Kurogane think of sick beds and burning homes.

Cells with thick iron bars lined either side of the wall, prisoners moving half-seen in the dark like snakes in an underground nest. Most of them either purposely ignored Kurogane as he passed or looked away. Others didn't seem to be aware of his presence, muttering to themselves in the dark. One, a red-headed man Kurogane dimly recalled as being some sort of child murderer, even gave him a crooked smile and a thumbs up. The prisoner in the next cell looked up and grimaced, catching Kurogane's eye as he made an obscene gesture in the warden's direction.

Kurogane wasn't even aware of moving then, wasn't aware of anything but the sudden rage that boiled up within him, white-hot, overflowing like a pan of boiling water. Kurogane barely registered the man's eyes going wide or the small squeak of fear the man gave as Kurogane _slammed_ against the bars of the cell, metal beginning to bend slightly underneath his unnaturally strong grip. He was consumed by the heat of it, by the desire to make this man fear, to make him hurt, to _kill…_

— _a thing that will always destroy never protect-_

With a sudden, shuddering effort Kurogane pried his hands off the bars and moved away from the cell, doing his best to ignore the dents his hands had made in the bars and the frightened prisoner still staring at him in terror. The bars hadn't broken, at least, and for that Kurogane was grateful. These men were scum but he still had no desire to murder one with his bare hands. That felt too much like letting Erebus win, and if there was anything Kurogane had grown to hate more and more over a thousand years it was letting the damn demon _win._

The solitary confinement cell was behind a thick wooden door at the end of the hall. Kurogane pulled his keys off his belt and unlocked the door, taking a lamp off the wall as he stepped inside.

Kurogane heard the prisoner before he saw him. The man was sitting cross-legged in the corner of his cell, singing in a high, strangely tuneless voice.

" _Ring-around-a rosie, pocket full of posies."_ As he sang he rocked back and forth. " _Ashes, ashes."_

"We don't sing songs about plague in a place like this," Kurogane said darkly. The man paused for only a moment's breath and continued.

" _Ashes, ashes, we all fall down."_

"I said, shut up!" Kurogane growled. The man paused and finally turned to look at him.

He was indeed as tall and thin as Kurogane had thought he was in that first brief glimpse. Blond hair hung limply around his shoulders, contrasting sharply with the tattered black cloak he wore. His feet were bare and there was a crooked smile on his face. He stared at Kurogane out of mismatched eyes: the right eye sky blue and the left a glittering gold. His arms were still pinned behind his back and bound in iron chains, but he moved as easily as if they were no more than strips of paper.

"You don't have to shout, Mister Black," the prisoner said in a curious, sing-song voice. "It's mean. You'll scare me."

"Do you know where you are?" Kurogane said, ignoring the comment.

"I don't even get a 'hello'?" the man said, giving Kurogane a look of long-suffering. "You're so _mean_ , Mister Black. You shouldn't be nasty to your guests. Come on, smile!"

"My name's not "Mister Black,'" Kurogane snapped. "It's 'Kurogane.' You can call me warden."

"Kuro-tan, huh?" The man rocked back and forth again, head bobbing curiously like a sparrow. "Kuro-pon? Kuro-rin?"

" _Kurogane_." Kurogane glanced down at the single usable page of the report he had, scanning for the prisoner's name.

"You can call me Fai," the prisoner supplied helpfully. "It's not good to read in low light, Kuro-warden. You'll strain your eyes."

"I didn't ask you," Kurogane said.

"But you should have," Fai said pleasantly. "You'll never find out anything if you don't learn how to ask politely, Kuro-pi."

" _Kurogane_ , for the last time." Kurogane glared down at him and was met with a steady gaze. He had been told the man was mad, but Fai's eyes were bright and sharp and Kurogane couldn't quite believe it. _Stupid,_ maybe. Annoying, certainly. But not mad. "Do you know why you're here?"

"Do you?" Fai cocked his head for a moment as if listening to something only he could hear and then laughed. "Kuro-rin is the oldest prisoner here, right?"

"I'm on _this_ side of the bars," Kurogane muttered.

"Like a puppy in a kennel," Fai continued. "Hey, do the guards have to take you out for walks, Kuro-puppy?"

"Shut up!" Kurogane paused for a moment and silently reminded himself that hitting prisoners was frowned upon, even if it would be incredibly satisfying.

"You say that a lot," Fai said, undaunted. He began rocking back and forth again, shaking his head like a wet dog. "You should be more friendly to people."

"Whatever," Kurogane growled, giving it up. "You're not going to be here long anyway. Just stay here and be quiet and there won't be any trouble."

"You're going to send me away?" Fai's lip quivered dramatically. "But we've only just met! I thought we had something _special._ "

"This isn't a prison where they send just anyone," Kurogane stated. "This isn't a place for the likes of you."

"But you don't even know what I've done." Fai's voice was light as ever, but there was a distinct shadow behind it. Kurogane snorted.

"Annoyed your previous wardens to death?"

" _Maybe_ ," Fai said with another laugh, flopping over onto his side like a landed fish. "Hey, Kuro-sama, do me a favor? My hands hurt. Take these off?" He wiggled his fingers in Kurogane's direction, chains jangling with the movement.

"The guards should have taken those off before tossing you in there," Kurogane said irritably. "And why the hell are you still wearing those weird clothes? The prisoners are given clothes."

"I wouldn't know," Fai said conversationally, rolling from side to side as he spoke. "Maybe Kuro-pon should fire some people."

"If I wasn't short enough on guards as it is," Kurogane muttered as he fiddled with the keys on his belt. The manacles around Fai's wrists were definitely from his prison, which begged the question of why they had unchained him only to put the shackles back on before putting him in the cell. He found the right key and took a step towards the cell. "Move where I can reach you. Any funny moves and you'll be wearing those all night, understand?"

"You don't trust me?" Fai made an exaggerated whimper. "Meanie. Maybe I don't want you to take these off after all."

"Then I'll leave," Kurogane said. Fai rolled back over to face him, eyes wide and full of fake sadness.

" _Mean_ ," he pouted. "That's why they don't let you out at night, Kuro-rin."

"Who told you that?" Kurogane said sharply.

"Someone said something," Fai said in an offhand tone. "I don't remember who. I was being dragged along in the chains and they said it. I assumed Kuro-warden must have been a very bad boy and had his dinner taken away and bedtime moved up."

'" _No one_ is allowed out of this place at night," Kurogane stated. "Keep that in mind if you ever get any damn fool idea of escape in your head, understand? Not in my prison."

"Escape?" Fai looked scandalized. " _Never_ , Kuro-pin. Would never cross my mind."

"What mind?" Kurogane muttered as he reached through the bars.

Fai moved so that Kurogane could reach the manacles around his wrists. The metal felt cool and solid underneath his fingers. Fai's fingers twitched but he didn't move in the slightest as Kurogane turned the key in the lock and the chains fell open. Fai's wrists beneath the manacles were raw and red and far too thin, but he moved without any outward show of pain. He stretched one arm upwards as the other went momentarily to his ear and he winced just slightly in a way Kurogane wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been pressed up so close against the bars. After a moment Fai turned his head and gave Kurogane a smile full of false sunshine.

"Ah, so much better!" Fai stretched out his arms again, thin fingers splayed wide above his head. "Kuro-rin's not such a meanie after all."

"Whatever," Kurogane muttered darkly, stepping away from the cell. "I'm leaving now. Behave and you won't see me again."

"Really?" Fai leaned up against the bars, reaching one hand through and just barely managing to touch Kurogane's wrist with one finger. "Maybe I'll have to cause trouble again."

"You'll regret it if you do," Kurogane said darkly, stepping away from him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fai giving him a jaunty wave as he exited the room. As the door swung close he could hear Fai's voice beginning to sing again.

" _Ring-around-a rosie—"_

Kurogane strode back through the hall of cells, ignoring the prisoners completely as he walked. He _knew_ this would be a problem. No prisoner transfer had ever gone easily. And there had clearly been some mistake somewhere because there was no way such an idiot could have done the kind of crime necessary to get locked in this pit. Thinking back on his conversation with Fai, Kurogane couldn't help but grimace. That had been one of the singularly most annoying experiences of his life. He supposed he should be thankful that the moron was in solitary right now, as it decreased the likelihood of Kurogane _ever_ having to deal with him again.

As Kurogane began to ascend the stairs back towards his own quarters a thought struck him, and the weight of it caused him to stop still in his tracks.

His conversation with Fai had been by turns confusing, irritating and an all-around bother. The thought of reaching through the bars and smacking the idiot across the head had come to him more than once. And that thought had been all his own.

During the entire time Kurogane had been speaking to Fai, Erebus had been completely and utterly silent.

o-o

_The sight laid before him was different this time. He was used to this, to flames and screaming and pandemonium all around him, but this was not his village. This place was colder and surrounded by stone buildings and rocky landscape. The people looked different too, even with their faces contorted in pain and their bodies falling apart, wracked by the plague._

_The plague was the same. Kurogane would never forget the sight of it, beginning with ash-black fingers and working its way through the rest body, destroying as it went. It was no natural plague, he knew that now. It changed humans into something else, something not quite human, twisted their features and their emotions, turned them into nothing more than pain-crazed monsters shambling ever forward, not caring what was in their path._

_The village was burning, but it was not his village. Kurogane was a child again as he stumbled blindly through it, the screams of the injured and dying burning his ears. He remembered screams like these, would never forget them even if he hadn't spent night upon night being forced to listen to them again. Bodies were piled up everywhere, most torn completely apart, a mess of organs and skin and sharp white bone. Somewhere a baby was crying._

_Kurogane walked forward because he did not know what else to do. In a thousand years of deaths, he had never seen this village. A woman dressed in rags darted out from some dark corner, running towards the outskirts of the village, and Kurogane could only watch, numb, as the plague victims converged on her and pulled her down, their hands ripping through her skin with inhuman strength. He felt something in his hands and looked down to see Ginryuu there._

_He clasped the sword tight and glanced over at where the woman was still screaming, but his legs wouldn't move. He could only stand there, ever useless, as they tore her apart._

Why show me this? _His thoughts came with abnormal clarity._ Why show me this place I've never been, these people I can't help? What good is a sword in my hands anyway?

_A high-pitched shriek from behind him made him turn. Something ran by him and the sword was snatched from his arms. A figure all in black fell upon the infected humans, taking off their heads in a single sword strike. The woman's body fell limply to the ground along with the remains of her attackers. The figure in black did not stop even to look at her, moving swiftly towards where more infected stood. They all screamed as the black figure cut them down, the sounds high and inhuman, mingling with the pained shrieks of the humans still living._

_It seemed to go on forever and somehow Kurogane could see it all, even though he was rooted to a single spot. Sprays upon spray of infected black blood splashing upon the stones, mingling with the red of those still human, corpses everywhere lying in piles like abandoned dolls._

_There was no one left then but Kurogane and the person in black. The figure lowered his hands and Kurogane could see that they were caked with blood. A pause and a shuddering breath that seemed to shake the figure's entire body as its hands tightened along Ginryuu's hilt and it approached the frozen Kurogane._

_His entire body screamed to fight back but still he couldn't move. The figure raised the sword above its head and it cloak fell backwards, moonlight illuminating blond hair and a pair of mismatched eyes shining with unshed tears._

_The sword sliced through Kurogane's stomach and everything was pain._

Kurogane's eyes flashed open. Instinctively he moved to press a hand against his stomach and was stopped by the chains still wrapped around his right wrist. Blearily he felt around for the key he'd hidden under the overturned mattress, rational thought slowly coming back to his mind.

It was a damned stupid torture, he decided as he irritably unlocked the one still intact chain and ran a hand gingerly along his stomach. There was indeed a scar there and it would be there all day. It stung when he moved.

A damned stupid torture. Kurogane was used to dreams of the day his village was razed, was used to visions of the day his father infected him with this curse before being swallowed by the thing they had called the shadow plague. Used to visions of his mother plunging a sword into his father's chest and dying with blood on her lips and a hand on his cheek. All these things he had seen a thousand times and in a thousand different ways, sometimes the events as they had happened and more often than not worse, visions where his mother turned on him, where the plague victims ate him alive, where his father threw him into the fire as a sacrifice to the demon that now shared his body. But never before could he remember being shown something like this, a place he had no connection to and a death from a person he had only barely met.

Kurogane stood with only a slight wince, running his hands along the scar. Even worse than the wounds on his back from the night before, the ones that had now healed without a trace. He supposed it could have been worse - he had spent days before with his body covered in scabbed-over burn sores, after all, or days with his mouth burning from a sliced tongue — but still, it was all in all _not_ an auspicious start to the day.

He had only just gotten dressed when there came a tentative knock at the door. Kurogane cursed and felt a spike of high, sharp anger hum through his bones _kill him for this who interrupts me this early, break him make him bleed teach him a lesson_ and the sight of Ginryuu in chains on the wall as passed was enough to make him pause and collect himself before unbarring and opening the door.

A guard was standing there, looking nervous. Kurogane crossed his arms irritably and did his best to block out the rage that was building quietly beneath him.

"What?" His tone was a sharp clear warning and the guard took a half step backwards.

"Sir…" The guard paused, seeming to gather himself. "The new prisoner, sir…"

"What about him?" Kurogane muttered, even more annoyed than before. The stupid new prisoner. As far as Kurogane was concerned, he'd be perfectly happy if he never had to bother with Fai again, Erebus's uncharacteristic silence be damned.

"Someone needs to feed him." The words were said all in a rush so that all Kurogane heard at first was 'summuneedim.' Noting Kurogane's face, the guard repeated his words.

"So? That's not my job."

"It's just…" The guard took another deep breath. "I won't do it, sir. He's—he's not like the other prisoners. I can't go back in that cell."

"Why the fuck not?" Kurogane snapped _kill him for such insolence you know you can_. His fist punched against the wall and the guard winced visibly, noting the crack that appeared in the stones. "That's what you guards are here to _do._ You're telling me that all the damn guards who have been feeding and dealing with the rapists and murderers and who the fuck knows what other kind of scum we've got in here are suddenly pissing themselves over delivering food to one single idiot prisoner who probably shouldn't even _be_ here?"

The guard took another step back and Kurogane suddenly noted that the man was actually shaking. Part of him wondered if he truly looked that frightening and the other part didn't give a crap if he did.

"There's something wrong with that man!" the guard said in pleading tones, voice raw. "We can all feel it. There's—there's something—whenever anyone goes in there-"

"Then send someone else to do it, if you're so damn afraid of that idiot," Kurogane said darkly. "Stop wasting my time."

"No one will go in, sir," the guard said, taking another step back. "We all feel it. You can't even step a foot in that room without feeling it."

"Then who the hell fed him last night?" The guard's silence was all the answer Kurogane needed. He gave an irritated sigh and did his best to keep the sudden urge to snap the man's neck under control. He couldn't have this conversation any more. Any more and he really would—

"All right." Kurogane made a dismissive motion. " _I'll_ take the idiot his breakfast, Get the hell out of my sight."

The guard gave a nervous stutter of gratitude and a hasty bow before hurrying away. Kurogane watched him go with thinly veiled disgust.

 _You could have simply killed him for that,_ Erebus purred in his ears.

"Shut up," Kurogane snapped, long past caring if anyone heard him talking to it. He paused. "But you will, won't you? You didn't say anything to me when I was talking to that prisoner."

The demon was silent again and Kurogane felt a spike of anger so great it made him wince momentarily. He pressed one hand against the wall and waited until the feeling had passed.

He had tried to ask the night before too, to no avail. Whatever had made the demon go quiet in his mind, Erebus had no plans to share it.

After a brief stop in the kitchen Kurogane found himself once more descending into the depths of the prison. As he passed the main line of cells his eyes were drawn to the twisted grooves in the iron bars of the one cell, the ones he had made the day before. The prisoner inside that cell was huddled in a dark corner, arms wrapped around himself, and he did not look up as Kurogane passed.

Irritably Kurogane pulled the keys from his belt and unlocked the wooden door, stepping into the room where the solitary cell was.

"All right idiot, I don't know what the hell you did to frighten off the rest of the damn guards but-" Kurogane's words were cut short as he took stock of the sight in front of him.

Someone had at least managed to get into the room to bring Fai some of the gray prisoner's garments, but the clothes had not been worn. Instead Fai had torn them all into long strips which he had wound all about the bars of his cell. More were wrapped tightly around his wrists, waving in the air as he made strange patterns in the air with his hands. Fai was sitting in the far corner of the cell again, but this time he was not singing and didn't even seem to realize that Kurogane had walked in.

"Idiot. What the hell do you think you're doing?" Kurogane set the food down and stepped close to the bars, trying to get Fai's attention. "Hey! I asked you-"

Quicker than Kurogane's eyes could follow, Fai moved. The blond's hands darted through the space between the bars, grabbing tightly onto Kurogane's wrists. His golden eye seemed to be almost glowing and there was a strange light shining in his face. His smile was a thin crooked line.

"The hell are you-" Kurogane tried to pull away but Fai had him caught and held, like an owl staring down a mouse. All of Kurogane's supernatural strength didn't seem to be enough to break that hold.

"'Hell?'" Fai repeated, and his words were strange and slurred, as if he was speaking through a thick blanket. "Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it."

His eyes glittered as he spoke and Kurogane was struck with the sudden, undeniable thought: _he knew._ Fai knew what was inside of him, what happened every night.

With a burst of strength Kurogane pulled his hand away, stepping back out of Fai's reach without even realizing it. Fai lowered his hands to his sides and slowly walked from one end of the cell to the other, his head tilted just slightly and a broken tree smile on his face, like a cat eying its prey.

"What the hell are you?" Kurogane asked.

"We're all mad here." Fai raised an arm and stared curiously at the scraps twisted around it as he quoted the words, smile widening with every word. "I'm mad. You're mad."

"Or else I wouldn't have come here," Kurogane finished, unimpressed. "What kind of game are you playing?"

Fai's golden eye slid over to stare at him but he did not move his head.

"We be of one blood, ye and I," he murmured. A laugh tore itself from his throat and he fell back against the wall, one hand reaching up to clutch at his ear. As he did so Kurogane noticed for the first time that there were scratch marks along the other man's face and blood in his hair. Fai started to laugh quietly as he tore lightly at his ear, moving backwards until his back was against the wall. There was blood on his fingertips.

"Stop it!" Kurogane spoke without even realizing. Fai didn't seem to be listening, still laughing to himself as he tore idly at his own ears.

"Cry woe, destruction, ruin and decay." Fai rolled onto his back, staring at the back of his hands. He rolled his head to stare at Kurogane again and the gaze seemed to cut straight through him. "The worst is death, and death will have his day."

Blood was pounding Kurogane's ears and he almost didn't realize that he had begun to back towards the door. He paused, consciously stopping himself from moving any further. He'd be damned if he acted afraid of _Fai,_ of all people. He lived in a place filled with vicious criminals and had a monster inside his head, one skinny smiling idiot should not be enough to faze him madness or no madness. Fai had begun humming to himself as he scratched distractedly at his bleeding ear, slowly unwinding the cloth strips from around his wrists.

"You know, right?" Kurogane said evenly. Fai continued humming. "Answer me, you bastard!"

"How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads," Fai murmured, no longer looking at him as if Kurogane was suddenly beneath his notice, "to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams." He laughed quietly to himself again and suddenly began gathering up all the scraps he had taken from his hands. " And all my days are trances and all my nightly dreams…" The laughter rose steadily and Fai didn't seem aware of him at all anymore, didn't seem aware of anything but himself and the scraps of clothing wrapped around him.

Kurogane stared at him for a long moment before finally pushing the plate of food at him irritably and sweeping out of the room. He clearly was not going to be getting any answers here.

 _Why don't you talk when he's there?_ Kurogane quietly demanded of the demon inside his head as he stalked through the prison, ignoring the prisoners scurrying in the dark and the guards slinking worriedly by, clearly aware that the warden was not in the mood to be bothered. _You never fucking shut up when I want you to, all day long, and then when I'm talking to the crazy idiot in the cell you don't say a word._ Erebus was silent but Kurogane could _feel_ his presence still, lurking on the edge of his mind, malevolent and dangerous as always. _Answer me, damn it! Someone is going to answer me._

 _Ask him, then,_ the demon said, its tone edged in knives. _You are my servant, human. Not the other way around._

Kurogane stormed into his room, slamming the door hard behind him and cursing the demon, the idiot, himself and anyone else he felt like cursing. This day was not starting out well.

o-o

He was attacking a pile of paperwork late in the afternoon when one of the guards timidly poked his head in and reminded him that the prisoners were being fed and once more no one would enter Fai's cell. Kurogane's immediate reaction was 'Let him starve' but Erebus had been particularly bothersome in the last several hours and even spending time with the crazy idiot seemed worth it for the few moments of mental silence it would bring.

Besides, this time he might actually be able to get some answers.

As he made his way down the stairs to the basement prison Kurogane noted that there was a strange thickness to the air. The prisoners he passed seemed almost lethargic, staring out at him with hollow eyes like lamps in the darkness. Kurogane darkly wondered if there was some sickness spreading below. That was just the thing he didn't need, an outbreak of infection on top of everything else.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting when he walked into the room. The first time he'd spoken with Fai the idiot had been, well, an idiot, but one clearly in full possession of his own mind. The second time Kurogane didn't even know what the man had been doing, full of laughter and quotes and strangely sharp insight held underneath it all. He couldn't help but wonder if the 'madness' had been all an act designed to deflect his questions, but somehow he couldn't believe that. Fai was definitely hiding something from him, Kurogane was certain of that, but there had still been something genuine in Fai's previous behavior.

Fai seemed to almost be waiting for him this time, sitting calmly beside his cell door with his hands folded in his lap like an obedient child. There were still a few stray straps of cloth wrapped around his wrists and Kurogane could see the angry red scratches by his ears. Now that he looked closer he noted that those were not all new — Fai's ears were covered in thin red lines of various age, most barely-healed.

"Morning, Kuro-tan!" Fai trilled happily as he stepped inside. "Or afternoon. Or evening. I don't really _know_ , since Kuro-rin doesn't let me have a window or a clock."

"Evening," Kurogane said shortly. "I was already here in the morning, remember?"

Fai cocked his head curiously.

"Were you?" There was a thin smile on his face and Kurogane couldn't tell for certain if the question was genuine or not.

"Why did you do that to your ears?"

"Hmm?" Fai's smile dropped for just a moment as he stared up at Kurogane in surprise.

"You were scratching at them before," Kurogane said. "Why?"

"Ah, that." Fai half-raised a hand to touch one ear and then lowered it, a gesture that seemed to almost have the sense of habit to it. "I told you already, Kuro-warden. I'm mad."

"So I hear." Kurogane crossed his arms, unamused.

"I hear things," Fai said, as casually as if he were telling the time. "Voices. All the time, I hear them." He touched a finger to one of the angry red scratches on his ears. "Sometimes I can't stand it anymore and I just want to make them be quiet. But it never works." The smile was slowly dimming and Fai's voice had taken on a low, dreamy quality, as if he was a man talking in his sleep. "When I still used to try to sleep, they would keep screaming and wouldn't let me rest. I can barely hear my own thoughts sometimes, when they speak to me. It's been this way for as long as I can remember….years and years and I don't even know their names anymore…" He gave a sudden hard shudder, like a dog shaking off raindrops, and then the smile was back in place. "And now you're looking at me funny, Kuro-pon. You think I'm crazy now, right?"

"I thought you were crazy before," Kurogane snorted.

"Mean," Fai pouted, looking away. "I won't talk to you anymore if you keep being mean, Kuro-sama."

"Fine by me," Kurogane stated, all but throwing the food towards the cell. "There's your dinner. You're not getting anything else today so eat it and don't play with it. Next time I come down I'm bringing you a prisoner's uniform which you will _wear_ and not _destroy_ and then you are going to stop doing whatever the hell it is you keep doing that's scaring off the guards from dealing with you. I'm not going to be your babysitter forever. I've got better things to do."

Fai didn't answer him, continuing to pout.

"I'll take that to mean you understand." Kurogane turned to leave.

"You shouldn't be so cranky all the time, Kuro-warden," Fai trilled. "After all, you hear them too."

Kurogane whirled. Fai was standing against the bars, staring at him with an impenetrable smile.

"What the hell does that mean?" Kurogane said in low tones.

"You hear a voice, too, don't you?" Fai said. His eyes were ringed in shadows. "Something else that speaks in your head and doesn't let you think."

"What the hell are you?" In a flash Kurogane was back up against the cell, reaching through the bars to grab Fai by the collar. Fai continued to smile calmly at him, unaffected.

"We be one of blood, ye and I," he murmured. Somehow he managed to pull back away from Kurogane's grip even though Kurogane was certain that the other man had been held tight. Fai pressed himself up against the back of the cell, hands behind his back. Both eyes seemed to glow in the shadows. "Hey, Kuro-rin, I've been wondering something. Is there a door here you've never been able to open? A cellar, maybe, one that even you can't pull open no matter how hard you try?"

Kurogane opened his mouth to give an angry reply, then stopped as memory struck him. There was one door he had never been able to open, deep in the heart of the prison. It was an old wooden thing he'd assumed led to a long-defunct cellar and even all his demon-cursed strength had not been able to budge it an inch.

"You should keep that in mind," Fai said with a small laugh. "That's what we've come for." He paused as the sudden sound of commotion came from outside the door. "Ah, there it is! You'd better go, Kuro-tan. They need your leader skills outside."

Kurogane was about to tell him to shut up and stop giving him orders when he heard the unmistakable sound of a guard frantically calling his name. He shot Fai a burning glare and was answered by a breezy smile and an innocent shrug.

"This isn't over, idiot," Kurogane snapped. "You know something, and you're going to tell me what it is." With a last curse Kurogane turned away from the cell and exited the room.

"What the hell is the problem now?" Kurogane strode angrily down the corridor, ignoring the prisoners who were clustered near the bars of their cells, still watching him with eyes like moons in the dark. A guard was standing in front of one of the cells, waving wildly at him.

"I-I'm sorry, sir," the guard stammered, taking a step back. "B-but this is important. I thought you should see…" He nodded fearfully towards the cell at his right. Kurogane immediately recognized the slightly twisted bars of the cell as belonging to the prisoner he had nearly killed the day before.

The prisoner was still there, hands pressed up against the crooked iron bars. His eyes were glazed and tinged with yellow, and he was breathing in short, rapid gasps.

His hands were dyed an unmistakable black.

o-o

Plague.

It was a constant fear in a place like The Hole, with its close quarters and poor ventilation. A single infected prisoner and it would be easy for death to spread like wildfire throughout the prison, infecting guards and prisoners alike.

Kurogane cursed as he punched uselessly at his desk, ignoring the way the wood broke under his fist, splinters digging into his skin. He stared down at the letter he was writing and cursed again. Sending for aid was an obvious course of action, but what sort of aid and how quickly he could get it, whether he would get it at all…that was the problem. He had tried to be as vague as possible while not underplaying the danger, but there was no guarantee that anyone would listen to his words. Even leaving aside the fact that those in power would likely be happy enough to let the prison become a plague pit so they'd have an excuse to set fire to the whole place, there was the matter of the plague itself. Few people believed that the shadow plague even existed, and fewer still had seen its effects.

Kurogane was one of those few, and he would never forget it. It crept up slowly on its victims, turning the tips of their fingers black. Soon the whole hand would be infected, and then the infection would spread through the body, turning the eyes yellow, the skin pale and rotten, destroying eyes and lungs and bones, twisting the personality until there was nothing left but a deranged husk that might have once been human. The infected person would feed on anything it was able to get its hands on, human or non, alive or not. Destruction always followed in its path.

- _His father, hands spreading deep and dark and black and a smile spreading across his face as all trace of humanity left it—_

Kurogane gave a heavy sigh and ran a hand through his hair distractedly. They had isolated the infected prisoner as best they could, but space was limited. The best course of action would have been to place the victim in solitary but to do that he would have to move Fai elsewhere and there was nowhere else to put him. Already two other prisoners were showing symptoms. All had been quarantined in a single line of cells on the far end of the corridor, the prisoners from that corner doubled and tripled up in other cells. It wasn't the wisest course of action and Kurogane had no doubt that even some of the healthy prisoners would be killing each other over minor squabbles before this thing was over, but it was better than the alternative. As for the guards, those not on duty when the infected prisoner was discovered had been sent notices to remain away from the prison until further notice and to contact authorities immediately if they showed any signs of illness. If nothing else Kurogane could at least keep the plague confined to just the prison. The door to the prison had been locked for now, and Kurogane himself had the only key/

There was no need to worry about infection himself. _Nearly a thousand souls, and only two had remained uninfected until the very end._

If it was something the demon did, Kurogane didn't know. Nor did he want to. There was nothing that would make him want to feel in any way indebted to the monster that ate at his insides all day long and condemned him every night.

As for that, the sun would be setting soon. Kurogane shakily pushed the letter away and stood, leaving the room and heading towards his own quarters. The letter would have to wait. When had it gotten so dark outside? He didn't even remember eating his own dinner.

He had just unlocked the door to his quarters and was unbuttoning his shirt when the sounds of a disturbance from outside the door caught his attention. A voice that sounded like one of the guards was yelling his name. Kurogane's gaze was drawn immediately to the window. The sky had darkened considerably and he was already starting to feel sore, as if he had a whole body cramp. He didn't have much time and he couldn't risk letting Erebus escape the room, not today. In order to be sure that there was no chance of the plague spreading to the town he'd been forced to have all guards currently in the prison remain there for the time being, rather then sending them home at night as he normally did. Even with the main prison door locked, if the demon escaped tonight it would be more than just prisoners who died.

The voice called for him again and Kurogane cursed as a spike of pain coursed along his spine like an electric shock. He didn't have time for this.

Kurogane stormed out of his quarters, leaving the door ajar behind him as he stepped out into the hallway. The prison was suddenly eerily quiet all around him, somehow feeling hollower and less alive than it ever had before, though he had spent countless nights here alone. There was a strange sense of dread creeping up on him as he turned a corner.

"Sir!" The voice rang sharply in his ears as he moved forward. "Sir, the prisoners—!"

There were two guards standing in front of him in the hall, blocking the way with their bodies, their backs to him. A third was lying on the ground just beyond them, clutching at a heavily-bleeding arm. And in front of the guards, barely held back, were the three infected prisoners.

Erebus was laughing, and Kurogane cursed it all.

"Damn it!" Kurogane crossed the distance in the space of a second, wishing he had his sword and knowing he could never have stopped himself from killing both guards and prisoners if he had. "How did they escape?"

"We don't know, sir!" the wounded guard called weakly. "They've just-" He cut off with a moan, doubling over as he clutched at his injured arm. Even in the darkness of the hallway, Kurogane could see a black stain beginning to spread across the guard's fingertips.

One of the other guards cried out suddenly and collapsed as one of the infected sunk its teeth into the man's neck. Their hands had gone completely black by now and their skin was a sickly gray, hanging off their arms in ragged patches, revealing muscle and bone underneath.

"Sir! What do we do?" The remaining guard took a step back as the three prisoners slowly began to shamble forward, stepping over the newly injured guard as if he wasn't even there. The guard with the wounded arm was beginning to convulse wildly, choking noises tearing themselves from his throat.

"Don't let them bite you," Kurogane ordered. "Get away from them, I'll-"

 _You'll do what, little human?_ Erebus's laughter tore through him like a gunshot wound and Kurogane nearly doubled over from the sudden pain. There was no time. No time.

"Sir!" The uninfected guard had gone beyond frantic and was reaching terrified. Kurogane couldn't even look at him, pain digging through his body like the claws of a beast.

"You have to kill them, I don't care how," Kurogane managed to choke out the words. Without even a second look he turned and half-ran, half-stumbled back towards his room. Halfway there he collapsed, legs falling out from under him, chest slamming hard against the cold stone floor.

 _Soon, soon,_ Erebus chanted in his head. _Soon everyone here will be my meal._

"Shut…up…" Kurogane choked out, forcing himself to his feet. A line of blood was beginning to run down his chest and he could _feel_ the thing moving under his skin. It felt like it was tearing his insides apart.

He fell against the door to his room, pulling it open so violently he was almost surprised it didn't fall off its hinges. He slammed the door hard behind him, locking and barring it with trembling hands as pain coursed up and down his body. He could see the last vestiges of sun disappearing through the window as he stumbled towards where the chains hung on the wall.

There was no time, no _time._ His hands fumbled for the keys and he fell back down onto his knees, hands pressed against his chest as if he could hold the demon in. Somewhere in the distance he could hear someone screaming but the sound was drowned out by the screaming in his ears.

A soft gasp somehow managed to make itself heard over the roar and Kurogane's head shot up.

Fai stood there in the corner of the room, staring down at him.

"What are-you idiot, what-" Kurogane forced the words out past the pain tearing through him. "You've got to-"

It was too late. The last of the light was gone and Kurogane couldn't hold back the scream as he felt claws, iron-hot and razor sharp, tearing through muscle tissue and organs, severing lungs, crushing ribs, tearing him open…

The last thing Kurogane saw before the red haze swallowed him were Fai's wide mismatched eyes staring down at him.


	2. Night of the Hunter

_Fai died a thousand times in front of him that night._

_Each time the manner was different but the end result always the same. It was always the demon or Kurogane, one or the other ripping him apart. Sometimes Kurogane could only sit there unable to move as the demon took its time taking Fai apart, tearing off limbs and pulling out organs while the still-living man writhed in pain beneath him. Other times Ginryuu was in Kurogane's hands again and he used it to stab Fai over and over again before storming out of the room and massacring everyone in the prison, prisoners and guards alike. There were moments when Kurogane wasn't even certain who was in charge of his body, uncertain whether it was the demon or himself who slaughtered Fai over and over again without a moment's hesitation. Through it all Ginryuu was still held tight in his hands._

_That sword cannot save anyone. You cannot save anyone._

For the first time in many long nights Kurogane awoke with not quite a scream, but certainly a gasp. His entire body was sore, covered in a variety of healing cuts and scabs. He sat up slowly, leaning against the wall as he stared at the carnage that surrounded him. The meager furniture in the room had been utterly destroyed, lying in splinters on the floor. His clothes were all in tatters and a small dazed part of Kurogane's mind thought irritably that those had been his best pants.

Memory returned all in a rush and he pulled himself to his feet abruptly. Immediately he felt dizzy and had to lean on the wall momentarily for support as his eyes swept around the room, searching for the sight he had no desire to see but knew instinctively must be there: Fai's mangled body.

A quiet sound that might have been a laugh and might have been a sob caught his attention and Kurogane stared, uncomprehending. Fai was curled in the corner of the room, arms wrapped around himself as he rocked slowly back and forth, muttering to himself in some language Kurogane didn't quite recognize. Other than the ever-present scratches on his ears, he was completely unharmed.

"What the…?" Kurogane breathed. He felt Erebus stir in his mind and was dimly aware that the demon was quite annoyed, yet it still remained stubbornly silent. Kurogane took a shaky step towards Fai before glancing towards the door. It was still locked and barred as it had been the night before, though there were deep cuts like claw marks in the thick wood. Kurogane looked back towards Fai, who was in a world of his own and seemed barely aware that Kurogane was even there. Kurogane turned away from him and reached for the door.

"Why do you cry out thus, unless at some vision of horror?" Fai slowly uncurled himself and stared at Kurogane, head hanging sideways as if dangling from a hinge. He stepped forward, moving jerkily like a marionette whose strings had been cut, and ran one hand over the locked door. "The house reeks of death and dripping blood."

"What the hell is going on?" Kurogane's voice sounded shaky in his own ears and it only made him angrier.

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here." Fai fell back against the far wall, scratching at his ear and laughing. He extended one bloodied hand towards Kurogane as if inviting him to step forward. Kurogane gave him one last, dark look and then carefully undid the lock and peered out into the dark hallway.

Immediately his senses were assaulted by the smell of blood. It was everywhere, the stench so thick it was like a presence. Kurogane took half a step into the hall and paused, staring into the gloom. In the silence he could hear the sound of someone— or some _thing_ — moaning softly. Kurogane took another step, wondering if he should risk a lamp.

Something moved in the distance and Kurogane backed into the shadows as he saw it. It was one of the prisoners, the red-haired child murderer. The last Kurogane had seen him he had been still healthy, cramped in his cell with one of the displaced prisoners. Now he was nothing but a shambling ghost of himself, hands all black, fingernails rotting off, hair lank and matted with blood. His mouth hung open loosely and his eyes were glazed and sightless.

Kurogane backed into his room, careful to make as little noise as possible as he shut the door and barred it once more. His hands clenched tightly into fists. While he had been incapacitated by the demon, plague had clearly spread throughout the prison. He had no doubt that the few uninfected were already dead. It was not unlikely that he and Fai were the only two healthy people still alive in the entire prison.

Kurogane glanced back over at Fai, who had not moved from the corner of the room. Fai was still in the middle of the strange fit or whatever the hell it was, staring at Kurogane with eerie calm as the blond clawed at his own ears, so there would be no help from that quarter for now. With nothing else to do, Kurogane unlocked the inner door that led to his private chambers. He needed to get dressed, at least. As he began to dig out some new clothes he found his gaze drawn once again to Ginryuu hanging on the wall.

_A sword in your hands can only kill._

In disgust Kurogane turned away. He pulled on the rest of his clothes and returned to the room where he had left Fai.

Fai had finally moved from the corner and was sitting by the long-unused fireplace. He had somehow retrieved the metal poker from where Kurogane had stored in inside the fireplace behind the grate, as much out of the way of the demon as he could manage, and was poking idly at the ashes on the floor. He looked up as Kurogane entered, a lazy smile on his face. Something about the smile made rage boil up inside Kurogane and before he even knew it he had crossed the floor and was pulling Fai up by the collar, slamming him back against the stone wall.

"How the hell are you still alive?" Kurogane demanded.

"That _hurts_ , Kuro-rin," Fai whined innocently.

"Cut the crap," Kurogane snapped. "You saw _it_ , right? Why the hell didn't it tear you apart?"

"I told you before," Fai said, his eyes flat but the smile unyielding. " 'We be one of blood, ye and I.' Right?"

"Don't give me another stupid quote, I'm not-" Kurogane cut off abruptly as the implication of the words sunk in. He loosed his hold on the other man's collar. "You…"

"Me," Fai said in agreement, cocking his head slightly, his smile more than a touch manic.

"You have something in you too," Kurogane said slowly.

"I don't think Kuro-sama's demon likes me much," Fai lamented, brushing out the creases in his tattered clothes as if it would make any difference. "He was very rude." He gazed at Kurogane sidelong out of his golden eye. "I think mine is stronger, you see."

"Why the hell didn't you _say_ something?" Kurogane growled.

"I _did,_ remember?" Fai said with infuriating cheerfulness. "And anyway, it's not really something you share with strangers, right? If I told someone I had a demon inside me they might think I was _crazy._ " He gave Kurogane a crooked smile.

"So that was all an act, before." Kurogane crossed his arms and glared. Fai wilted slightly under his gaze.

"Not _all,_ " he said. "I am mad. Really truly." The smile returned full force. "But it's okay! It's only sometimes. Oh, don't look so fierce, Kuro-pon! I didn't lie to you. Well, a little. Occasionally. Not much." Off Kurogane's look, he continued, "I _did_ want to come here, but I'm not really sure how I managed it. Something…happened, when I was mad, and they put me in jail. And I didn't know that Kuro-rin had a demon until I met you. It seemed really strange at first, but it made sense when I thought about it. The door must have called you here too."

"Door?" Kurogane repeated.

"Ah, you don't know," Fai said, downright _smirking._ "I said it before, remember? That there's a door here that you can't open. Didn't you wonder why?" Fai twirled the poker around in his hands. "I've been searching for something for a very long time, you see, and I finally found it here. That's not any ordinary door. This place sits on top of one of the eight Gates of the Underworld."

"That's a superstition," Kurogane snorted.

"Is it? Like demons, right?" If it was possible, Fai's smile grew even wider. "I found out about it in a book. The other seven Gates have long been lost, but the last one was supposed to be somewhere in this country. I knew as soon as I came here that I'd found it at last."

"And if it really is a Gate to the Underworld," Kurogane said, heavy sarcasm in his voice, "what did you intend to do with it?"

"Don't be so dense, Kuro-tan," Fai said, waving a hand at him. "What did you think? Demons like ours can only be controlled by a Lord of the Underworld. As soon as Kuro-pon tells me where it is, I'm going to open the Gate and travel the twisted path so that I can meet with one of the Lords. And once I do, I'm going to ask him to take this demon out of me."

Kurogane stared at him. He supposed he should be feeling some great swell of hope at those words, but he didn't. In the first several hundred years since his 'infection' he had tried countless methods to purge the demon and all had failed. It would take more than the words of some mad idiot to make him feel any kind of hope.

 _Is that so?_ Erebus's voice almost made him jump. The demon's unnatural silence had nearly made him lower his guard.

"You look like you don't believe me," Fai said brightly. "You're probably thinking I'm really suspicious, right? And wondering why you should believe me at all, right?"

"Exactly," Kurogane said darkly. "Why should I?"

"We~ell," Fai said, drawing the word out, "you haven't really got anything to lose, have you?"

He was still smiling triumphantly already, as if he'd won. It made Kurogane want to hit him and there was something oddly comforting in the feeling of only wanting to hit someone and not rip them apart. The feeling was _his_ , at least. His, not the demon's.

It had been a long time since he'd had something important enough to lose. He couldn't wish that there would be something he could gain, couldn't dare to hope for that…but there was nothing to lose, either. Kurogane sighed.

"All right. I'll at least take a look of this door of yours. But if this turns out to be some stupid idiot wild goose chase I'm dragging what's left of you back to jail."

"Yay!" Fai gave a happy cheer. "I knew you'd come around, Kuro-rin. Now, if you'll just lead the way…" Fai took a step towards the door and Kurogane grabbed him by the collar.

"You're forgetting something, idiot. We're trapped here right now."

"We are?" Fai repeated curiously.

"Before the sun went down my men were trying to hold off infected prisoners who escaped their cells," Kurogane said. "And if the first infected ones got out of their cells then everyone else in this damned place is probably either also infected or dead." He paused for a moment as a thought occurred to him. "How the hell did _you_ get out of your cell anyway?"

"Ah. As for that…" Fai gave a lighthearted shrug. "You should really stop grabbing prisoners through the bars while your keys are just _hanging_ there where anyone could accidentally take one." Kurogane glared daggers at him again and Fai gave another shrug. "It worked out in the end, didn't it? If I was still in my cell I'd be in trouble. I think our demons are why neither of us were able to be infected, so we don't have to worry about that."

"I'm not worried about being infected," Kurogane stated. "But this isn't an ordinary plague. If we're seen by someone infected they won't just let us go by. The main door should still be locked so the plague is quarantined inside the walls, but that means we can't get out either."

"No problem, no problem." Fai waved a hand airily. "You can't die, right?"

"How do you know that?" Kurogane said sharply.

"Well, I did see a demon rip you apart last night, remember?" Fai gave an innocent laugh. "It was easy to figure out after that. Actually, it's very interesting. I've never seen a possession like that. Not that I've seen a lot, of course."

"Even if I can't die, _you_ can," Kurogane pointed out.

"I'll be fine," Fai insisted. "I'm sure brave Kuro-sama will protect me!"

"No." Kurogane's voice was grim and final. "I can't protect anyone. I can't save anyone."

"We're perfectly matched, then," Fai said, smile hung with secrets and eyes like ice. "Because I'm not someone who deserves to be saved."

They stared at each other for a long moment before Kurogane turned away in disgust.

"We'll have to kill any of them we come across," he said as he moved back towards his private chambers. "Can you do that?"

"You don't need to worry about me," Fai promised, trotting along after him. As he followed Kurogane into the next room he immediately noticed Ginryuu on the wall. "That's a nice sword, Kuro-tan. Where did you get it?"

"It was my father's," Kurogane said shortly, digging in one of his drawers until he found a small silver key hidden under rows of folded clothes. Kurogane stared at it for a long moment, considering, before walking over to the sword on the wall and unlocking the chains. Ginryuu fell neatly into his hands, the weight and balance of it as perfect as they had always been, as if the sword had been made for him right from the start. Kurogane closed his fist tightly around the hilt and then turned away, moving over to his closet and pulling out two worn knapsacks. "Take this. We'll need to stop by the kitchen for supplies. If anything attacks, get behind me and try not to get your idiot head bitten off."

"Of course," Fai trilled. Kurogane stopped to glare at him.

"Are you sure about this?" he said darkly. "If you have some kind of fit or whatever the hell you call that I'm not getting killed helping you."

"No problem, no problem." Fai leaned against him and was promptly pushed away. "Your protective streak is really cute, Kuro-rin."

"I told you-" Kurogane started to object but Fai had already skipped away, laughing. He stood to one side of the barred door, looking at Kurogane expectantly.

Kurogane felt the weight of the sword in his hands and the silent, stewing presence of the demon in the back of his mind and sighed. He must be the mad one to be even _listening_ to the idiot, but it wasn't like he had a better idea. He gave Fai one last glare to be sure the idiot was keeping his mouth shut and then carefully unlocked the door.

Outside the door was as quiet as it had been before. Kurogane gazed up and down the hall, letting his senses guide him. Nothing. He took a step out into the hall and indicated for Fai to follow, motioning for the other man to keep his stupid idiot mouth shut. Fai nodded as if he understood but Kurogane did not find the slightly manic smile reassuring in the least.

The first infected person they ran into was dispatched with a single blow from Ginryuu that sliced the man's head clean off his neck. The body collapsed into a pile of rags and blood and Kurogane stepped over it as if it was nothing, not even bothering to look and see if it had been a prisoner or a guard. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to recognize anyone. They were all corpses now, every one of them, and he wouldn't slow himself down by remembering that they had once been human. Fai paused only momentarily behind him with a small, sharp intake of breath. Kurogane risked a half-glance backward, but all he could see was Fai's pale hair and his wide mismatched eyes looking far too bright in the dim light of the hallway.

He kept close to the wall as they approached the kitchen. Light could be seen peeking through the cracks underneath the closed doors and there were sounds of something moving inside. Fai opened his mouth to say something and Kurogane silenced him with a swift gesture. Motioning for Fai to stay back, he pushed open the door with one hand and stepped inside.

Immediately something human-shaped threw itself at him. Kurogane swung his sword, slicing straight through the victim's plague-ravaged body, moving to one side to dodge a second victim as it dived for him. There were at least three in the room that he could see, including the one he'd just killed. A fourth dark shape was huddled in the shadows of the corner, something that might have been another infected or just a corpse. Kurogane ignored it, focusing on the two remaining victims as they converged on him.

The shadow plague gave its victims strength beyond that of normal humans once it had reached the fullest stage of infection, but Kurogane had no fear of that. He was not, after all, a normal human.

He had just dispatched the last of the infected when the fourth thing — the blob that he hadn't been sure was alive or not — leapt from the shadows with a speed he hadn't quite expected. Kurogane pulled Ginryuu from where it was buried in the stomach of the last victim and turned to meet it but it dived towards him and then, unexpectedly, _past_ him to where Fai was still peering in the doorway like a curious child.

"Idiot, run-" The words had not even left Kurogane's mouth before Fai moved, faster than the infected and — _damn it, impossible_ — faster than Kurogane himself could have been, and there was something black and sharp in his hands that sliced through the thing's bloated neck. Blood spilled onto Fai's coat, soaking through the black sleeves, and somehow he didn't even bat an eye as he easily swept past the corpse and moved to stand at Kurogane's side.

"That was unexpected, wasn't it?" Fai chirped brightly, idly swinging his weapon in his hands. It took Kurogane a moment before he realized that Fai was holding the metal poker he'd taken from Kurogane's fireplace. Noting Kurogane's look, Fai shrugged. "You said you weren't going to protect me, right Kuro-rin? Ah! Or are you mad because _you_ wanted to kill them all?" His voice was light but there was a very old bitterness underneath that set Kurogane's teeth on edge.

"Just surprised that your idiot brain was smart enough to remember to bring a weapon," Kurogane stated as he walked over to the large wooden pantry and began digging through it for anything salvageable. Fai moved up beside him, trying to see over his shoulder, and Kurogane watched him coldly out of the corner of his eye. "You did that without hesitating."

"Hmm?"

"When that thing attacked you. It used to be human. You killed it without hesitating."

"So did you." Fai's eyes were hooded and his smile like a tree in November, all dying branches.

"I was trained to do that," Kurogane said. "You don't wield a sword unless you can use it without hesitating."

"And I'm a dangerous mad prisoner," Fai said. "It's not something to think too hard about, Kuro-pi. That's not human anymore, right?" His smile faded for a moment. "Once that infection spreads completely, they aren't anything like human anymore."

"You're familiar with it?" Kurogane raised an eyebrow.

"Somewhat," Fai said, bright smile back in place. "Either way, it's obvious, isn't it? It even looks like a corpse now."

Kurogane turned to look at him but Fai had already wandered away, using the poker to try and knock things down off a high shelf for no apparent reason other than he felt like knocking things down.

While Fai wandered around being a general nuisance, Kurogane finished filling their packs with what decent food he could find along with several bottles of water. Even as he packed he felt like a fool for doing so. Who was to say that there was a door to the Underworld in this place at all? Likely it was all just the fantasies of a madman, and he would end up standing with the idiot in a dusty cellar staring at nothing.

"It _is_ real, Kuro-tan." Fai appeared at his elbow again. Kurogane moved away from him, scowling.

"Does your damn demon read minds, too?"

"You just let all your thoughts show on your face too much," Fai told him with a laugh. "Don't worry, don't worry! The Gate _is_ here. Trust me."

Kurogane didn't even grace that with a reply, giving Fai a dark glare. Fai laughed again and waved the poker at him.

"You'll see. And then you'll have to apologize for being all pouty, Kuro-sama."

"I _do not_ pout."

"Of course you don't." Fai patted his shoulder and began attempting to push one of the dead corpses under a table using only the poker. Ignoring him, Kurogane went back to gathering supplies. He moved away from the food stores and dug around inside one of the storage closets, looking for one last item.

"All right." Kurogane finally turned back to Fai. "I've got everything we need. Now we'll see about this damn mythical door of yours."

"You'll see," Fai sang quietly. He gave a sudden quick shake of his head as if trying to clear something out of it before motioning for Kurogane to lead the way.

"We'll have to go down to the lower prison level to get to the door," Kurogane told Fai as they made their way through the darkened halls once more. "Keep close to me and don't drop the damn poker. We've barely seen any infected since we left my quarters. Odds are most of them are still in the lower level."

They approached the steps to the lower level warily. Someone had, mercifully, left the lamps lit so that they were able to see their way down the steps but Kurogane could _feel_ that there were things moving in the underground level. There was a heavy smell in the air, blood and infection and rotting tissue, so thick it was almost like smoke. As they moved deeper underground he could hear movement in the darkness beyond and the sound of clinking chains. Kurogane hesitated for only a moment on the final stair, eyes half-closed as he extended his senses forward, concentrating on his opponent's location and then leaping forward even before anything had come into view. His sword cut straight through the outstretched arm of an infected prisoner as it shambled out of the dark towards him.

From that point the rest of the journey through the prison seemed almost as if he was stuck in some never-ending nightmare. The infected were everywhere, pressed together in the tight halls between cells that hung open loosely on their hinges. Kurogane cut through them all almost mechanically, sword slicing through skin and bone, blood staining his hands and face. Ginryuu was like a silver blur shining oddly in the dim lamplight as he cut down opponent after opponent, never looking at their desiccated faces, ignoring the dark shapes of bloody corpses that were scattered like ashes along the floor. Kurogane simply moved forward and killed, over and over again, and tried not to listen to the exultations of the demon in his head as he cut through another enemy that had once been a person.

And yet even through the haze of blood and death he was always aware of Fai at his back, wielding the poker like he had been fighting with one all his life, moving at all times perfectly in tune with Kurogane. When one infected slipped through his defenses to attack a vulnerable spot Fai was there, stabbing it in the eye or the chest with a single smooth movement. When Fai mis-timed his attack and made a non-fatal stab he would still move in perfect harmony to send the wounded enemy straight into Kurogane's waiting sword. Even as they moved deeper into the heart of the prison and the lamps grew dimmer and dimmer Fai seemed to always be at his back or only a step or two behind, always moving with him, never getting in the way of Ginryuu's strike or ending up under Kurogane's feet.

Still the enemy kept coming at him, pouring out from half-open cells, staggering around corners, leaping out from shadows. Kurogane couldn't even remember how many he'd killed or how many inmates had even been in the prison (and he didn't dare look too long at any of them, not wanting to see the guard uniforms he was certain at least a few of the infected had been wearing). There was a pounding in his head and a beating in his blood that Kurogane only half-recognized and didn't dare stop to focus on. The demon inside him was exulting with every kill, and Kurogane could feel himself growing stronger every time he cut through another one of the walking corpses. He had not killed this many people in a very long time and though Kurogane himself knew that he only did this out of necessity, that these people could not be saved — _you cannot save anyone with that sword —_ he didn't like the feeling of _joy_ that was beginning to bubble up inside him as they moved further down the corridor. There was an infected in front of him and another somehow had gotten behind and Kurogane raised his sword and killed, and killed, and killed.

Then there was nothing more in front of him but darkness and Kurogane whirled, sword raised--

—and just managed to stop himself from cleaving Fai in two.

They stood there for a moment, Kurogane's sword just inches from Fai's head. Kurogane was breathing heavily, his eyes wide and the pounding still in his blood, and then Fai smiled.

"If you want to do it," he said simply, "then go on."

Something in those words and the tone in which he spoke them — as if he didn't even _care_ that Kurogane had come so close to killing him, as if he wasn't standing in a damn _tomb_ covered in blood and guts and who knew what else, with his smile not as false as Kurogane thought it should be and his eyes unreadable - that made the pounding in Kurogane's head cease abruptly. It was if Erebus had held Kurogane's entire being in its claws for a moment and then immediately retreated for some unknown reason. Kurogane slowly lowered his sword.

"What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?" His voice was haggard and the sound of it just made Kurogane more annoyed. "I could have-"

"Probably." Fai smiled and skipped past him without even a backwards look. "Is this where the door is?" He stuck his head into an open doorway, squinting in the darkness. His golden eye seemed to be glowing slightly, despite the low light.

"You-" Kurogane started, then gave up. It was no business of his, whatever was wrong with the crazy idiot. He had gone this far. There was no choice but to continue. "Yes, it's here. The wooden door in the middle of the room." Kurogane strode past Fai and used his foot to rub some of the dust off the door. It was set into the floor and looked like nothing more than a normal door that might lead into an underground cellar. "There's no key. How the hell do you intend to get it to open?"

"I thought I might wish really hard," Fai said, crouching down curiously beside the door, resting his chin on his hands. "You have to do it too, Kuro-pon. Clap your hands and believe real hard."

"The hell I will," Kurogane growled, arms crossed stubbornly.

"You don't believe me at all, do you?" Fai gave a sigh of long suffering. "And after I let you in on the secret too. All right, well, you'll see." He closed his eyes and stood still for a long moment, hands clasped together as if in prayer, then opened his eyes again and smiled. "There we go."

"That's it?" Kurogane raised an eyebrow. "You didn't do anything, idiot."

"No faith at all," Fai said, clucking his tongue as he stood and reached for the metal door handle. He pulled, but the door didn't budge.

"See? I told you, you can't-" The rest of the words died in Kurogane's throat as Fai pulled again and the door slowly swung open. Fai gave Kurogane a dazzling smile.

"What were you saying, Kuro-sama?"

"Shut up," Kurogane muttered, annoyed. He stepped forward and looked down into the empty doorway. "There's nothing down there."

"Look closer."

Kurogane leaned forward and stared into the darkness. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he began to see what Fai was talking about: small dots of light like stars glittering in the darkness. It was if he was staring down into an empty night sky.

"The Night Stair," Fai said in a low voice. "It was in the book I found, the one that told me about the eight doors. It's the first step to the place where the Lords of the Underworld gather."

"I don't see a stair," Kurogane said.

"That doesn't mean it isn't there." Without waiting for a reply Fai jumped into the open doorway. Kurogane moved forward without even thinking, reaching out as if to grab him and stop him from falling into darkness, but Fai did not fall. He seemed to be standing on nothing at all. "See?" Fai stomped a foot in demonstration. "Perfectly sturdy."

"Hmmph. So now you want me to follow you on a damn stair that you can't even see, into a place I only have _your_ word actually exists." Kurogane eyed him dubiously.

"That was the plan," Fai said, and Kurogane suspected that it was the most honest thing the idiot had said all day.

"Wait there. I have one more thing to take care of." Kurogane reached into his knapsack and removed two items before tossing the knapsack at Fai, who caught it curiously.

"Kuro-rin?"

"I can't guarantee we killed every infected person on the way down here," Kurogane said deliberately. "And I won't be the one who lets this plague spread." He held up one a mostly-empty tin of lamp oil, the last item he had taken from the storeroom, and threw it into the hallway. Kurogane took a step back and grabbed the nearest lamp off the wall, throwing it back down the dark hallway and not even bothering to look back as the smell of smoke began to fill the air. He walked back to Fai, who had already moved a few feet down the stairs.

"Let's go."

o-o

Fai led the way as they began to walk down the Night Stair, skipping forward in a manner that suggested he would be taking the steps two at a time if he could actually see them. Kurogane followed behind at a more deliberate pace, his sword sheathed and his eyes fixed firmly on his own feet.

"So where exactly are we?" Kurogane asked after they had walked for some time in silence. The door they had come through had melted into the night sky the moment it had shut behind them and they seemed to be walking in the middle of space, surrounded by nothing by sky and stars. There was a cool wind blowing but Kurogane couldn't tell at all where it was coming from. His steps were feeling strangely heavy the further down they went, but Fai seemed unaffected.

"Under," Fai said, after a moment's consideration.

"What the hell does that mean?" Kurogane grumbled.

"Well, we're going to the Under _world_ , now aren't we?" Fai replied. "Where else would it be but under?"

"It feels like we're outside," Kurogane said. "I wouldn't expect _under_ to feel like that."

"I don't think it's something humans can really explain, Kuro-pon," Fai said with a shrug. He raised a hand towards one of the stars as if he could reach out and touch it. "If I had to say something, I guess I'd say below looks like above."

"That makes no damn sense," Kurogane snorted. "But I guess I shouldn't expect any better than that from _you._ "

"That's mean, Kuro-sama," Fai said in wounded tones. "After I worked so hard to lead you here."

Kurogane was quiet for a moment, his eyes straying to the blood-soaked poker that Fai was still carrying.

"You fought pretty well with only that," he said at last.

"Flattery won't make me forgive you for being mean," Fai pouted.

"You used it like someone used to holding a weapon," Kurogane continued, sharp red eyes doing their best to make a crack in the brick wall of a smile fixed on Fai's face.

"It's the same for you," Fai said, parrying the blow like a champion swordsman. "You're very good for someone who kept his sword chained to a wall."

"You don't forget some skills, even when you haven't used them for a while," Kurogane stated. "Ginryuu has been in my family for generations."

"Ginryuu, huh?" Fai repeated curiously. "So you named it? That's awfully cute of you, Kuro-tan."

"It's not _cute_ ," Kurogane growled. "There were two gods that guarded the country I came from: Tsukuyomi, goddess of the moon, and Ginryuu, the dragon god of protection. The sword is given to the one whose job it is to protect the country." Something dark and heavy seemed to flow through him and he felt his steps grow slower. His hands felt cold around the sword. "The last one to wield it was my father."

"Walk faster," Fai said with unexpected sharpness and Kurogane found himself unconsciously obeying. There was a forced nonchalance in the blond's voice as he continued. "So it belonged to your father? I bet he passed it down to you in a big formal ceremony."

"No," Kurogane said blackly, eyes hooded. "I took it off his dead body."

"So you killed him?" Fai's face was utterly blank, his voice toneless. Even so, something about it compelled Kurogane to answer, even when he wanted to say it was none of Fai's business.

"I didn't." Kurogane could feel the demon stirring in his mind, as if it was waking up from some long sleep. "My mother did. To save me, after my father succumbed to the plague."

"So that's where you've seen it before," Fai said. "I wondered. It's not an infection normal humans know about." He gave Kurogane a sidelong look. "But we're not normal, right?"

"Speak for yourself, idiot," Kurogane retorted. A thought occurred to him and he regarded Fai with narrowed eyes. "You said you were familiar with it too. How?"

"I've been alive a long time," Fai said with a noncommittal shrug. "You hear things."

"I've been alive a long time too," Kurogane said deliberately. "And no matter how much I've searched, I've barely found a single concrete record of the shadow plague even existing. But you knew all about it."

"Just because Kuro-min hasn't found any record doesn't mean that they don't exist," Fai said, yellow eye shining like a star. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy."

"Don't quote fucking Shakespeare at me," Kurogane snapped. A cold wind wrapped itself around him like a blanket and he resisted the urge to shiver. "What is with you and the damn quotes anyway?"

"It doesn't speak in human tongue," Fai said, speaking slowly as if reciting a half-recalled poem. "Not so that someone like you could understand. It can only pick things up from other places and repeat them back, like an animal. When I was looking for records of the Underworld I read a lot of books, and it _remembers."_

The sky around them seemed blacker and Kurogane shook his head to clear it before speaking again.

"I read a lot too, when I first got this thing inside me," he said, watching Fai closely. "And I've never found any records of this damn Underworld even existing. But somehow _you_ seem to know everything about it. Why?"

"Not _everything_ ," Fai said. "You really think too much, Kuro-sama. I told you, I've been alive a long time. A very long time." His smile seemed somehow older than the stars that surrounded them as he paused for just a moment on the invisible step and stared back at Kurogane. "Though Kuro-sama's old too, of course. I'm impressed you still remember your sword's name."

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"It's just interesting," Fai said. He stretched out his arms above his head and turned on one heel so he was facing away from Kurogane, skipping down another step. "I don't remember the name of my village anymore. I don't even remember…well, that one doesn't matter, right? Anyway, we should keep walking. You never know what you might find, down here."

"Why would you care, even if we met something?" Kurogane muttered, irritated. His feet felt oddly heavy, as if they were weighed down by blocks of ice. "You didn't even care when I almost cut you in two up there."

"In two, huh?" There was an odd strangled sound in Fai's voice, nearly buried beneath the cheer. "That _would_ be terrible, wouldn't it?"

Kurogane's hand reached out and grabbed Fai's arm almost before he had realized it. Fai glanced back at him, surprised, and there was something hollow and wistful in his eyes.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Kurogane asked him, because he didn't know what else to say.

"You keep asking that," Fai said, pulling away. "I'm mad, remember? So you don't have to worry about me. Mad people will always be mad, you know. The voices in my head won't stop just because you keep talking to me. That's why you should just keep walking." He paused, turning away. "Sometimes, though…sometimes when you talk, Kuro-tan, I can almost hear you. Just you, I mean; no one else."

Without waiting for a reply he skipped down another step as if suddenly desperate to put some distance between them, and Kurogane followed slowly behind.

They continued on down the stair. As they went lower Kurogane began to be aware that his steps were periodically becoming slower. Each time he slowed Fai would turn and say something to him and the sound of it would bring him back to himself. It was growing colder the farther down they went and Kurogane could see his breath curling in front of him like smoke. Fai somehow seemed immune to the cold, despite his thin tattered clothes.

They had gone on this way for some time when Kurogane recalled the food he had brought. He reached back into his pack and felt around for something edible.

"Kuro-rin?" Fai glanced back at him. For the first time Kurogane noticed that the man's blue eye seemed slightly dilated and that he was breathing quite hard.

"You should eat something," Kurogane said gruffly, tossing some of the supplies at him. Fai caught them with a curious look, as if he had forgotten all about food. Kurogane stared dismally at the rest of the food in his hands and then stuffed it back into his pack. It was strange, though Kurogane was certain some time had passed since they'd left the prison he didn't feel very hungry at all.

"I think that's a side effect of being in the Underworld," Fai said as he picked disinterestedly at a stale bread roll. "After all, this is the road that leads to the world of the dead and the dead don't eat, so why should anyone else be different?"

"We're alive," Kurogane snapped with unexpected ferocity in his voice. "Even if you don't seem to act like it."

"That's a strange thing for someone who dies every night to say, Kuro-rin," Fai said brightly, turning and throwing the roll at Kurogane's face. He avoided it with barely a move and the roll fell into the darkness below them.

"How much farther down does this stupid stair go, anyway?" Kurogane said, ignoring the remark. His voice sounded strangely weary and harsh in his ears.

"All the way," Fai said with a shaky, secretive smile.

"Do you ever just give a fucking straight answer?" Kurogane muttered.

"Probably not," Fai said. Kurogane glared at him and in response Fai gave him a look of sweet innocence. "Mad, remember?"

"Mad, my _ass_ ," Kurogane said. "You've been fine since we got here."

"Really?" Fai replied. "Maybe you're mad now too, Kuro-rin, and so you just can't tell anymore."

"I can still tell that you're an idiot."

"But an idiot who knows where we're going, which is more than Kuro-pin can say," Fai needled him. Kurogane snorted and pushed him forward.

"Shut up and keep walking," Kurogane huffed. His fingers were starting to feel almost numb from cold.

"Your wish is my command, Kuro-sama," Fai said with a mock bow. He half-skipped down another step and then nearly stumbled for a half-second before righting himself, the movement so quick that Kurogane almost didn't even notice.

Kurogane had only taken two steps to follow when a sharp pain in his stomach suddenly caused him to double over in pain.

"The hell-" The words barely forced their way out of Kurogane's mouth before the pain hit him again and he fell to his knees. It was a strangely familiar pain, as if—

— _as if something was tearing him apart from the inside._

"It hasn't been a full day," Kurogane gritted, one hand held against his chest as if he could hold the demon back. "Why-"

"Time flows differently here." Fai was standing two steps below, facing him calmly. His face was pale white like a moon in the darkness.

"Then get out of here," Kurogane growled. "It's-"

"I'll be all right," Fai told him, though there was no trace of a smile on his face. He took a step closer to Kurogane, reaching out with one hand. There was neither fear nor pity in his gaze. "Relax, Kuro-rin. It will pass soon."

Kurogane wanted to yell at him, to ask what he was talking about, to tell him to run, but the pain was too great. Another wave of pain flowed through him and the stars went out.

o-o

_His father was holding him by the wrist, dragging him through the town. Houses were burning around them and people were screaming in the distance._

" _Where are we going?" Kurogane asked through a throat rubbed raw by smoke. His father glanced back at him, face covered in soot. He was holding Ginryuu tightly in one hand._

" _It's not far now, kid," his father said. "Just stay with me, all right? It won't be long. You'll be fine."_

_Kurogane wanted to pull away, wanted to yell back at him, but his body wouldn't obey. It was just the same vision again, the same one he had seen night after night. His father would drag him to Tsukuyomi's shrine at the top of the hill and then the torture would start. He had relived this night so many times that Kurogane had long ceased being scared of it. It always ended in his death, it was only the manner of dying that changed._

_Something seemed strange this time, however, though he wasn't sure what. His head felt fuzzier than normal and for some reason he kept staring at his own hands, covered in ash and held securely in his father's white-knuckled grip._

" _Not far now," his father repeated as they began to ascend the hill towards his mother's shrine. Kurogane glanced back down towards the burning town._

" _But shouldn't we find Mother…?"_

" _Don't worry about her," his father said with a forced smile. "Your mother's a tougher lady than you think. She'll be coming up to meet us soon, I'm sure. Just hold on a little longer."_

_Something was definitely different this time. Kurogane had repeated this day so many times he no longer remembered exactly how it had truly happened, but this…this seemed too familiar, somehow._

" _Into the shrine, quick." His father herded him inside. "There's not much time."_

_Kurogane did as instructed, unable to control the movements of his own body. His father led him to the altar in the center of the shrine and began to bathe his hands in the bowl of water that sat atop it. Dirt and ash immediately clouded the water, but Kurogane's fingers were still black._

_No. This was not how it was supposed to go. How could he have forgotten this?_

" _This is the only way I can protect you now." His father touched a hand to the tattoo that ran along his arms and covered his face and then sliced open his own palm with Ginryuu. He crouched down beside Kurogane and took his son's hand. "Don't move, kid. This will only hurt for a minute."_

_This Kurogane knew, knew the feeling of Ginryuu's steel slicing open his flesh. The tattoo on his father's face twisted and moved under the skin and something seemed to be pouring into him as the blood on his father's hand merged with his own. The black was falling away from Kurogane's fingers._

_Suddenly his father's eyes opened wide in surprise and he yelled something Kurogane couldn't quite hear over the rush of air pounding in his ears. His father dropped his hand abruptly, dropped Ginryuu and staggered backwards, clutching at something black and hazy as it slipped through his fingers and oozed into the cut on Kurogane's hand._

" _That wasn't—damn it, no, it shouldn't-" His father's voice was choked with pain and sorrow even as the older man's fingers turned black. His father's skin was growing gray and his eyes yellowing — the same dream as always but there was no smile on his face this time, only pain and shock and a deep, deep sorrow, deeper than the sea, and the words 'forgive me' on his lips—_

_And then Kurogane's mother was there, as she always was, but this time she crossed the floor slowly towards her husband and took his plague-ravaged body gently into her hands. There was blood streaked all over her torn robes and her hair hung loosely around her shoulders. She kissed her husband's forehead as her knife plunged into his chest, and as Kurogane's father crumpled to the ground Kurogane could have sworn he saw a grateful smile on his father's lips._

" _It's too late for us all." His mother walked over to him then, her eyes sad and her smile heavy. Blood was dripping from a corner of her mouth and her skin was chalk white. Fire was burning through Kurogane's body and he couldn't look at her, could barely feel her arms as they wrapped around him. "I am so very sorry. You are the only one who can save them now. It must be by your sword that they die, do you understand? If it's you-"_

_Her words were drowned out by fire and blood as a wave of darkness welled up and overwhelmed him, swallowing them both._

"Good morning." Fai's voice was the first thing Kurogane heard upon opening his eyes. He sat up slowly, limbs feeling numb but not painful. There was not a wound upon him and his clothes were perfectly intact. Even the scar on his hand, the one that had been there ever since the night the demon was placed inside him, was still the same old scar as always, neither re-opened nor bleeding. Kurogane stared at it blankly, trying to recall the dream that was suddenly slipping away from him.

"Kuro-tan?" Fai waved a hand in front of his face and Kurogane smacked it away irritably as he climbed to his feet. All around them there was still nothing but cold air and night sky.

"What the hell happened?" Kurogane muttered, half to himself. "That wasn't the same as usual."

"Your demon didn't come out," Fai told him, slowly unfolding himself into a standing position. He began to walk down the stairs again, beckoning for Kurogane to follow. "Not like it did before, I mean. You fainted and then it talked to me for a bit in your voice, and then you went to sleep. You've been sleeping for a long time, I was bored." He gave Kurogane an affronted look, as if the other man had done it on purpose.

"That's not how it's supposed to happen," Kurogane said. His steps were stiff and unsteady as he followed after Fai. He could still feel Erebus in his mind, but the demon's presence was somehow even more muted than before.

"I think it's because we're here," Fai offered, not looking back at him. "Your demon said it sends you down here whenever it comes out. So if you're already in the Underworld it can't very well send you there, right?"

"But it still knocked me out," Kurogane said.

"Maybe that's just how it works." Fai shrugged. "It's _your_ demon, Kuro-min. I'm only guessing."

"Hmmph." Kurogane straightened his clothes and tried to shake the cobwebs from his mind as he took another heavy step forward. "You said I was out for a long time. How long?"

"Time doesn't flow right here," Fai said with another shrug. "Long enough for me to be _bored_. Your demon's not very good at conversation, Kuro-pon. Though I guess that means he's not much different from you, huh?"

"Shut up," Kurogane grumbled. His head felt fuzzy and sleepy and he shook the feeling off. "At least _you_ got some sleep."

"I don't sleep," Fai said, all smiles. "And I certainly wouldn't sleep _here_ , which is why you need to keep walking."

"Whatever." Kurogane ignored him, not in the mood for teasing. He was having trouble focusing on Fai's figure in front of him. "Let's just get going. The damn demon may not have come out this time but I'm not taking that chance again."

"You don't need to worry about me," Fai said, looking back at him. Through the haze in his mind Kurogane was vaguely aware that Fai's gaze was as steady as it had been before. "I'm not afraid of your demon. I told you, I think mine's stronger. Yours is just rude. You should teach him better manners."

"And how would I teach a damn _demon_ manners?" Kurogane grumbled.

"I'm sure there's a way." Fai smiled before looking away. "Say, Kuro-tan…your demon isn't normal, is it?"

"How should I know?"

"Well, I've never heard of one that acts like yours," Fai said conversationally, as if talking about the monsters that possessed them was no different than discussing the clouds. "Usually if a demon rips its way out of you, you die. Most just…stay inside the host, like an infection." His tone was heavy like a weight. "People who are born with a demon inside have it as a part of them that doesn't go away and can't escape, not easily. And if you take one inside willingly it's not…it doesn't really work like yours."

"I don't know anything about stupid crap like that," Kurogane said, shaking off the weariness and fuzziness and _everything_ that felt like it was pulling him down. "I didn't _study_ the damn thing. My father put it inside me."

"Really." There was a strange light in Fai's eyes as he looked back at Kurogane. "How?"

"I don't know," Kurogane said darkly. "It was too long ago. I don't remember, and I don't care. I don't think about it anymore." His hand moved reflexively to the hilt of his sword.

"Did he really mean to put that in you, though, I wonder," Fai murmured, as if talking to himself. "In that condition, I mean."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Kurogane grabbed Fai by the shoulder and pulled him backwards so that they were standing face to face. Fai simply smiled blandly back at him.

"Don't mind me, Kuro-rin," Fai said airily. "Just thinking, that's all."

"That's rare, for you," Kurogane snorted.

" _Mean,"_ Fai sniffed, turning away from him. "Come along, Kuro-tan. Miles to go before we sleep and all that." He glanced briefly backwards. "And you should not sleep, Kuro-sama."

As they walked the sky seemed to be growing ever darker around them. Kurogane's limbs felt heavier with every movement, his arms hanging uselessly by his side. Even the demon in his head had gone near-silent, as if hibernating. He felt cold all over.

"Not far now." Fai's voice broke through the haze, his blond hair still wavering in front of Kurogane like a beacon. "Keep walking, Kuro-tan. Not far now."

Deeper and deeper they went, the stars going out one by one around them. Kurogane could feel drowsiness settle over him like a thick blanket and he did his best to shake it off, focusing on the sound of Fai's voice.

"Not far now, Kuro-rin," Fai murmured, reciting the words like a prayer. "Not far now. Nearly there."

Kurogane wasn't certain how long they had been walking after that when he suddenly half-stumbled over the final step and found himself crouching on the dark ground surrounded on all sides by arched doorways ringed with white billowing curtains. The drowsiness that had been clogging up his head disappeared as suddenly as if it had never been there.

"What _was_ that?" Kurogane muttered, rubbing at his arms to try and restore some feeling to his frozen limbs. Fai stared calmly down at him. The only indication that the blond felt any discomfort at all was the unnatural paleness of his face.

"The way to the Underworld is full of dangers," Fai said, oddly serious. "You can't expect anything less, Kuro-rin."

" _You_ seemed fine enough," Kurogane snapped, irritated.

"I'm used to the cold," Fai said with a smile as frigid as any winter wind. "And the sleepiness….well, I told you, right? I don't sleep."

"If you didn't sleep you'd be dead," Kurogane said flatly.

"And if something ripped my insides apart I'd be dead too, right?" Fai smiled brightly. Kurogane scowled at him and he turned away, gazing thoughtfully at the curtains that surrounded them.

"So where are we now?" Kurogane asked, getting to his feet.

"There are many Lords of the Underworld," Fai said. "We need to choose one."

"So how the hell do we do that?" Kurogane muttered. There were at least ten different doorways surrounding them.

"I was thinking we'd just guess!" Fai said happily. He leaned back on one foot, swinging in a lazy circle with his hand outstretched. "I choose…this one!"

Kurogane opened his mouth to say something caustic but before he could speak Fai darted forward into the doorway and was swallowed up by darkness. Kurogane gave a heavy sigh and followed after him.


	3. Masquerade of Fools

On the other side of the door was a wide mid-day sky and Kurogane momentarily covered his eyes, unprepared for the sudden brightness. He and Fai were standing side by side on a staircase made of the same white marble as the wall. There were only three short stairs, weathered and partially crumbled as if belonging to an ancient building, and from there the steps disappeared into nothing but blue sky and clouds. Looking down Kurogane thought he could see a faint tinge of red far down past the clouds but it was hard to tell if it was truly there or only a trick of the light. There was a long wall that stretched out from either side of the stairs, creating a sort of corridor in front of them, one with no ceiling and no floor. The walls were decorated with high arching windows and elaborate circular columns, and there were strange shadowy figures lingering like ghosts behind them. They had no faces, only fathomless black eyes that shone eerily behind bone-white masks.   
  
Straight ahead of them at the opposite end of the corridor was another set of billowing curtains, barely more than a smudge of red in the distance. Kurogane thought he could almost see some sort of symbol printed upon them, a black shape that could have been a butterfly or a bat.  
  
“So now what?” Kurogane asked Fai, who was looking forward with an unreadable expression. “More invisible stairs?”  
  
“The Daylight Stair,” Fai intoned. “And they’re not invisible this time, Kuro-tan. You just have to know where to step.” With that he took a single step forward into nothingness.  
  
Kurogane instinctively moved forward as if to grab him, but even as he did something stopped Fai’s fall. A white disk, wide and slightly curved like a saucer, seemed to appear out of nowhere underneath Fai’s feet. As Kurogane watched, a second disk appeared just below the first, this one slightly smaller and a few inches to the right.   
  
Fai paused for just a moment on the first disk, his hand twitching almost imperceptibly towards his ears. There was a slight wince in his expression, quickly hidden, but Kurogane saw it nonetheless.  
  
“This one is easy, Kuro-pi,” Fai said, looking back at him with a pasted on smile that was stretched thin like piano wire. “Just stay on the white stairs and don’t fall off. If you do, you might not be able to come back up.”  
  
“What’s below us?” Kurogane asked, watching Fai with sharp eyes.   
  
“The places where sinners are sent,” Fai said, not looking at him. “A place of drowning. So keep your feet, all right?”  
  
Without waiting for an answer, Fai moved forward onto the second disk. His jump was slow and oddly graceful, as if he was almost swimming through the sky. As his feet touched the second disk, a third one appeared, this time wider and flatter, requiring a slight jump upwards to reach.  
  
Kurogane gave the ‘steps’ a distrustful glare and took a careful step forward. His body felt momentarily light and floaty as his feet slowly left the stone steps and landed on the first white disk.   
  
The minute both feet were planted firmly on the disk he was suddenly all but overcome with a boiling rage. Kurogane stumbled forward, nearly falling, gritting his teeth.  
  
 _This is how you_ should _feel._ The demon’s presence was like sudden bonfire bursting into flame behind his eyes, and Erebus’s voice was louder and clearer than it had ever been. _Pitiful human. Did you really think you could keep it held back for a thousand years? No…not a human. You’re not really a human anymore, are you?_  
  
 _Shut up,_ Kurogane thought fiercely, forcing himself forward. As his feet touched the second step he noticed that Fai’s movements had grown noticeably slower as the blond moved from step to step.  
  
 _Worthless, worthless always,_ the demon taunted him. Something gray and ghostly swept out from the walls, curling around Kurogane like smoke and then disappearing, leaving behind a faint trace of mocking laughter. The masked figures behind the wall were watching him with frozen faces. _Can’t save anyone, not even himself. How many do you think died in that prison, that you could not save? How many did you leave to the plague while you hid in your room?_  
  
 _That was because of_ you, Kurogane thought, his legs feeling heavy as lead even as he half-floated forward. The steps were growing further apart and he stumbled uncharacteristically as he jumped from one to the next. _Damn it, what are you doing to me? What the hell is happening?_  
  
 _I am only opening your eyes to all that you are,_ Erebus laughed, the sound like rocks scraping against each other. _You locked yourself away from humanity for so long, as if that would keep them safe from you. How many homeless on the streets did I eat, while you pretended you were keeping me in control? How many human souls have been consumed by me, that you could not save even with all your vaunted control? You say you cannot save anyone, but that is only you washing your hands of the desire for it. If you fail, you can say it will not matter because you did not try._  
  
 _It has nothing to do with you,_ Kurogane thought, momentarily falling to his knees, breath coming in short gasps. Fai was several steps ahead of him now, barely seen through the clouds.   
  
_Do you hate your father for doing this to you, I wonder? Do you hate your mother for giving you a last command you were never able to follow?_  
  
“Shut…up…” Kurogane growled again, barely aware that he had said it out loud. The demon’s presence was suffocating, pulling him down like the weight of a chain.  
  
 _Why did you keep a sword chained to the wall all this time? Why didn’t you throw it away if it was so useless?_ Erebus mocked him. _You pretend that a thousand years of deaths have stripped human things like hope from you, but it’s all a child’s lie you tell yourself. A man who does not wish to protect anyone with a sword has no need to keep one. Why have you held on to that sword all this time?_  
  
“How do you even know anything of that?” Kurogane hissed. “You’re just a fucking demon.”  
  
 _I am_ your _demon,_ Erebus replied. _I am your rage. I am the thing that you think holds you bound. But it seems you are, as ever, a human. Not like_ that _one._ Kurogane could feel the thing’s attention divert momentarily towards Fai, who was standing stock-still in the distance. _Though you die each night, the lingering stench of death is not on you yet. Why is that?_  
  
“Stop talking in fucking riddles,” Kurogane said, standing up with effort and taking a shaky step forward. He could feel sweat running down his face and gritted his teeth against the anger that was sweeping through him.  
  
 _Do you really have nothing to lose, Kurogane?_ The demon’s voice seemed different, somehow. There was a tone to it that made him think, oddly, of his father — not of the day his father had cursed him with the demon, but his father in the years before the plague: kind, wise, strong, wanting only the best for him. _Have you really lost the sensation of human things like hope? Have you really nothing left to protect?_  
  
“Why should you even care?”  
  
 _There is always more to lose, as long as you are still human. You have cast away those things every time for fear of losing them. If you don’t hold to it tightly, it will always slip from you in the end. Is it really only the demon that you keep bound in chains? You have always wished for something you could save. That sword is not meant only for killing. That strength is not only for killing._  
  
Suddenly all the rage seemed to drain out of him and Kurogane found himself crouching weakly on the stair, feeling strangely empty. The demon’s presence had retreated to the very back of his mind.  
  
Kurogane’s eyes were drawn to the sword at his waist and he quickly looked away. No. He had given up on those things. He had not been strong enough to do anything then, and he was not strong enough now. It was frustrating, but a thousand years of nightly deaths, of hiding in alleys and forests and under bridges, away from people, unable to stop himself from harming those who dared get near to him…that strength had never done anything but harm those around him.   
  
_Why did you keep a sword chained to the wall all this time?_  
  
Kurogane shook his head and slowly rose to his feet. He wasn’t going to waste time thinking about such things, not now. Maybe if the idiot’s promises turned out to be true, if he was actually able to have the demon taken out of him, then he could stop and think about it. For now, he could only move forward. Kurogane shook off the weakness and quickened his steps to catch up to Fai. The blond had not moved for some time, standing rigid as a statue in the distance.  
  
“Hey, idiot.” Kurogane tried to get his attention as he drew closer, but Fai did not turn. Irritably Kurogane made one last stride forward so that he was finally standing on the same step as Fai.  
  
Immediately the sheer rush of _sound_ nearly drove him to his knees again. It was almost like the voice of the demon when it was at its strongest but multiplied ten-fold, hundreds of distinct voices crying out in rage and pain, drowning out his own thoughts. Kurogane’s hands instinctively went up to cover his ears, but that didn’t silence the voices that swirled around him. They were oppressive, a living force of sound which pressed down upon him like a hand upon his back.  
  
 _“Demon child!”  
  
“You brought this on us!”   
  
“It was all because of you!”  
  
“Why didn’t you just die? Then none of this would have happened!”_  
  
The voices seemed to meld together into an indistinguishable hum and Kurogane forced himself to stand, concentrating as best he could at keeping the sounds out. Fai still stood in front of him at the very edge of the disk, trembling lightly.   
  
_Is this what he hears all the time?_ The thought forced its way past the million other voices. Somehow, Kurogane was certain of it — these were Fai’s voices, the ones that the man had claimed were always screaming in his head. _How can he even think with all this damn noise? It’s enough to drive you—_  
  
—mad.  
  
Fai’s head suddenly turned and then he was staring at Kurogane out of wide, glassy eyes, his face too pale and his smile a gaping wound.  
  
“I’m sorry.” The words cut through all the other voices like a knife as Fai stepped off the edge of disk.  
  
“Idiot--” Kurogane dived for him but he was too late. Fai disappeared over the edge and was gone.  
  
Kurogane stared down after him. There was nothing visible below him, just endless sky and something hovering beyond it, taunting him.  
  
 _“The places where sinners are sent. A place of drowning.”_  
  
Kurogane looked back up at the curtains ahead of him. At this distance he was still unable to make out the exact symbol upon them. That was where they had been heading. All he needed to do was go forward, and he would be at his destination.  
  
All he had to do was let Fai disappear into the darkness below and forget about him. Who was the idiot to him, anyway? Just a strange mad prisoner who had appeared out of nowhere, telling him about stupid shit like Lords of the Underworld and madness and voices, who’d sat prattling on while the demon inside Kurogane sat silent and obedient in his presence.   
  
Just a person who had fought at his back when they’d been forced to battle their way through a prison full of plague-mad inmates. Just a person who had remained by his side all night while the demon walked in his flesh. Just someone who had suffered the same curse that Kurogane himself had, and who was so obviously drowning under weight of it that it was a wonder the idiot thought those smiles could fool anyone at all.  
  
Just someone who had kept him walking down the Night Stair when Kurogane would have been overcome by it. Just someone who did not expect to be followed and did not wish to be saved.   
  
“I’m a bigger idiot than he is,” Kurogane said, disgusted, and then he jumped over the edge of the stair into the unknown below.  
  
—  
  
His body hit the water hard and the breath was momentarily knocked from Kurogane’s lungs. He didn’t even remember the fall, only that one moment he’d jumped off the Daylight Stair and the next he had been slamming into the water below.   
  
If what he was floating in could even be _called_ water. The place he was in looked like some kind of underground sea, so deep he couldn’t see the bottom of it. The water around him was thick and red like blood, with flashes of yellow and orange slicing through the surface whenever Kurogane moved. There was nothing above but a deep darkness so thick it was almost tangible, and there was no sign whatsoever of the bright daylight sky where he had been. Black shapes like twisted, burnt skeletons floated here and there in the water, black rocks jutting up from the depths like knives. There was the sound of rustling wings from above, like bats settling in a cave, but Kurogane could see no signs of anything living.  
  
“Damn it,” Kurogane swore through clenched teeth as he looked about for Fai. He felt something heavy on his wrist and pulled up one hand, staring. A chain had begun to wind its way around his wrist and he found himself beginning to sink slowly like a stone, the chain winding around him like a snake. He felt a sudden drowsiness sweep over him.  
  
 _“And you should not sleep, Kuro-sama.”_  
  
Kurogane shook his head to clear it and grabbed tightly onto the chain, pulling at it with all the strength the demon inside had given him. It crumbled in his hands like dead wood, breaking apart and sinking under the water.   
  
“Where the hell is this?”  
  
 _Lovely, dark and deep,_ Erebus whispered in his mind. _The Drowning Sea where the condemned will be pulled down under the weight of their own sins. Your precious friend is a dead soul now, foolish little human. Get us out of here before we suffer the same fate._  
  
“Shut up,” Kurogane snapped. “He’s not my friend.” Even as he spoke he was already swimming awkwardly forward, looking about desperately for Fai. Heedless of Erebus’s hissed warnings he took a deep breath and lowered his head beneath the water, trying to see through the red haze.  
  
A flash of blond caught his eye and Kurogane swiftly moved forward towards the sight. Damned if he would let it happen like this.   
  
Fai was struggling visibly, thrashing about wildly in the water as chains rose from everywhere around him, wrapping around his arms and legs and torso, snaking even around his neck. There was a nearly feral look in his eyes and he was making a choking noise as he began to sink beneath the red water, his limbs moving slowly as if he was swimming through mud. Kurogane reached for him, wrapping a hand around Fai’s torso as he grabbed at the chains, trying to break them. Even as the metal crumbled in his grip more seemed to come out of nowhere, sliding back to take the place of the broken ones. There was no end to it and Fai was growing heavier in Kurogane’s arms every moment.  
  
“Damn it, what _are_ these things?” Kurogane pulled apart another chain, the links disintegrating into ashes in his hands. He needed to get them out of the water, but there was no sign of shore anywhere. Finally Kurogane spotted a wide expanse of black in the distance, a low flat jutting of rock that sat like an island in the middle of the ocean. Slowly, painfully, he swum towards it, desperate to keep both his head and Fai’s above water. As he swam he could see that Fai’s face was growing even paler, the skin seeming suddenly thin and almost translucent beneath his grip and Kurogane had the momentary panicked thought that he had to get Fai out the water now or the blond would simply crumble beneath his grip, turned to ashes the same as the chains. He shook his head to clear the thought away and swam forward with even greater determination.  
  
 _I thought you couldn’t save anyone,_ Erebus laughed at him. _Or perhaps you’ll die together, hmm? How romantic._  
  
Kurogane ignored him, not having the breath to waste in reply. They were nearly to safety now. With an effort Kurogane heaved himself onto the sturdy black rock, dragging Fai along with him. A few chains remained wrapped around Fai’s legs and Kurogane had to break them before he could finally pull Fai all the way onto the dry surface. As the last chains drifted away into nothingness Kurogane noticed for the first time that his hands were covered in blood and thick black stains.  
  
He dragged Fai into the very center of the island and all but collapsed into a panting heap, Fai’s limp body resting on his lap. The blond stirred slightly, mismatched eyes blinking groggily up at him. His face was still too pale and there was blood matting his hair, though Kurogane could not see a wound.  
  
“That…was very stupid, Kuro-tan.” Fai’s voice was thin and breathy.  
  
“I don’t need to hear that from you,” Kurogane snapped, running a hand through his wet hair as he took stock of their situation. He still had Ginryuu and his knapsack of supplies on him, but Fai had lost both his own pack and the poker. With only Kurogane’s pack they would have enough food for two days, maybe three, but water might be a problem. There was no sign of anything living around them and Kurogane couldn’t see any sign of shore no matter what direction he looked. For all intents and purposes, they were completely trapped in the middle of nowhere.  
  
“You shouldn’t have come down here,” Fai said, smile wound over his face like a bandage.   
  
_“You’re_ the one who jumped,” Kurogane said darkly.   
  
“And you lied,” Fai replied. “I thought you said you didn’t protect anyone.”  
  
“You’re the last one to lecture people about lying,” Kurogane said. “So? Where are we?”  
  
“Some place that no one ever leaves,” Fai said, smile dropping away. “You should let me go back. The chains will drag me down, but you might be able to--”  
  
“You’re a bigger idiot than I thought if you think I’m doing that,” Kurogane said. “I’ll find a way out of here.”  
  
Fai gave a weak laugh that ended in a wet coughing noise.  
  
“This isn’t a place you can fight yourself out of.” Fai looked as if he wanted to say more but his voice was cut off by another choking cough. He was shuddering heavily in Kurogane’s grip, and something black seemed to be spreading around his arm. Kurogane grabbed his wrist roughly, staring.   
  
Chain links were burning themselves into the flesh of Fai’s arm like a brand.  
  
“You see?” Fai’s eyes were empty. “You can’t get me out of here, Kuro-tan. You should have let me go.”  
  
“Shut up,” Kurogane said, because he didn’t know anything else to say. His fingers closed uselessly over the hilt of his sword. “You don’t get to die that easily.”  
  
“It’s…not really _easy,_ ” Fai said with another hoarse laugh. He seemed to be having difficulty speaking.  
  
“Shut up,” Kurogane said again, helplessly. He wished there was something to hit besides Fai.   
  
“It’s all right not to protect me.” Fai rested one trembling palm over Kurogane’s wrist. “I told you, I’m not someone worth that. You’ll regret this in the end.”  
  
“You don’t get to decide that,” Kurogane snapped. There was a momentary silence, broken only by Fai’s shuddering breaths. “Why did you do that, anyway?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Don’t ‘hmm’ me! Why did you step off the stair?”   
  
“Ah…that.” Fai gave a weak half-shrug. “I didn’t really think about it at the time. It was just…too loud.” He pressed a hand against his ear. “I just didn’t want to hear it anymore.”  
“  
So all those voices…that’s what you always hear?”  
  
“You heard it?” Fai looked up at him in momentary surprise before giving a soft chuckle that ended in another wet cough. “I suppose you did. The Daylight Stair is dangerous because of that, after all. What did _you_ hear, Kuro-sama, before you caught up to me?”  
  
“Just the same thing as always,” Kurogane muttered, aware Fai was trying to change the subject but letting it go anyway. “The stupid demon.”  
  
“Right…the demon.” Fai gave another quavering laugh. “Was it different than usual?”  
  
“What’s that mean?”  
  
“Nothing. I just…noticed your demon was different. From mine, I mean.” His eyes started to slide shut and he gave a heavy shudder, forcing them back open. The mismatched eyes were bright with fever and his voice seemed thinner than before. Kurogane could feel an unfamiliar sensation of panic rising in his chest. “Say, Kuro-rin…what do you see, when it tears its way out at night? Just darkness?”  
  
“Memories, mostly.” Kurogane didn’t know why he was telling Fai this. It was none of the idiot’s business, and there were more important things to worry about right now. But the words came nonetheless. “Or things pretending to be memories. Usually it’s the night my father out this _thing_ in me, watching my parents die and waking up to see Suwa burning.”   
  
“Suwa?” There was something strange in Fai’s tone that he couldn’t quite name. “Is that your homeland?”  
  
“It was,” Kurogane said tightly. “No one’s heard of it now. It was a country along the coast of a small island. The rest of the island was all mountains where nothing lived, and there was nothing much even in Suwa’s lands.”  
  
“Was it nice?” Fai’s voice had a dream-like quality to it, as if he wasn’t completely there.  
  
“I was happy there,” Kurogane said quietly, not looking at him. “Suwa was protected by the Priestess of Tsukuyomi, my mother, and the island protector who wielded the sacred sword Ginryuu, my father. It was a peaceful island until the damn plague destroyed it all.”  
  
“The plague.” Fai’s eyes were hooded. “It comes out of nowhere and strikes down all who it touches. Except us.”  
  
“My mother was never infected,” Kurogane said. “She and I were the only two…”   
  
No. That wasn’t right. _Ash covered hands held tight in his father’s grip._ No, he hadn’t been infected, his father had. That was why his father had called the demon—  
  
 _—his father smiled weakly and then black began to spread along his fingers—_  
  
That wasn’t right either. Had they both been infected, then? Kurogane couldn’t remember. A thousand years of deaths and visions made his memories blur together, no longer able to recall which were true and which were only nightmares.  
  
There was something moving in the distance. Kurogane’s head jerked up as it approached, holding Fai close to his chest as he struggled to his feet.  
  
It was a single black boat, being rowed by a figure covered all in shabby black robes. It looked up as it came past and Kurogane found himself staring into a pair of empty sockets set inside a grinning skull.  
  
 _Well, well._ Its mouth didn’t move but Kurogane _felt_ the words nonetheless. _What have we here? The living do not belong in this place, boy._  
  
“I know that,” Kurogane said darkly. He narrowed his eyes at the boatman suspiciously. “You can take us out of here.”  
  
 _That is not my job._ It rested one skeletal hand against its chin as if deep in thought. _I will be back for you once you’ve died properly, boy. It shouldn’t be long. That one is already being eaten away from the inside._ It nodded towards Fai and Kurogane found himself clutching the blond’s body closer to his chest.  
  
“How else can I get out of here?” Kurogane asked. The boatman threw back its head in silent laughter.  
  
 _You_ don’t, _boy. A human soul that bathes in the waters of this sea will be dragged down by the weight of its own sins and devoured. You have no hope of reaching the opposite shore with your will still intact._ It regarded him intently and Kurogane thought he could see a blue flame glowing deep within the empty eye sockets. _Even with the thing that sleeps inside you, rotted as it is. But perhaps we can make a deal, boy._  
  
“What kind of deal?” Kurogane didn’t like the tone in the thing’s voice.  
  
 _You give me_ that — it pointed one skeletal finger at Fai’s still shaking form — _and I will take you across._  
  
“No.” Kurogane’s voice was heavy and final.  
  
 _That will not last long here,_ the boatman said. _It is too far gone, even for you. Can’t you tell, boy? It_ stinks _of death._  
  
“I won’t leave unless he comes with me.” Kurogane gingerly set Fai down and reached for his sword.  
  
 _That toy will not help you against me, boy,_ the boatman said, unconcerned, even as it began to row the boat away from the island. _I have work to do. Think about my offer. A soul like that thing has is of no value to a human. At least think of yourself._  
  
A sudden black fog seemed to cover Kurogane’s eyes and mouth, choking him and forcing him to his knees. When he opened his eyes again there was no sign of the boatman.  
  
Kurogane sat back down beside Fai, who no longer even seemed to be aware of his presence. The image of a black chain was slowly burning its way around Fai’s neck and the blond was muttering something to himself that Kurogane couldn’t hear. He pressed one hand against Fai’s forehead, feeling the heat beneath his palm, and gazed back out at the empty water surrounding them.  
  
“Damn it.”  
  
—  
  
He was not surprised when the darkness closed in on him this time.  
  
 _Kurogane stood in a high stone tower with a single window. It was a place he had never been before, but somehow that did not trouble him. Looking out the window he could see a courtyard below and far beyond that a plume of smoke darkening in the distance.  
  
There was someone else in the tower with him but he couldn’t make out their form. It was a person, sitting hunched against the far wall, head in his hands. He was waiting for something.  
  
“Do you agree?” The voice did not come from the person, but there was no one else visible in the tower. It was flat and completely emotionless and there was something strange about it, as if the words it spoke were simply a feeling that his own mind was interpreting as speech.  
  
“Will it—will it save him?” It was the hunched person who spoke, voice shaky and choked with tears and fright.  
  
“I will not consume him,” the strange wordless presence replied. “Is that not what you wish to save him from?”  
  
“I know.” The hunched figure stood and squared his shoulders as if preparing to walk to a gallows.   
  
“Do we have an agreement? I have your consent?” It was like words being inscribed on a tomb, final and absolute.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Something black began to seep in from under the door. The tower’s occupant stepped back in fear, back pressed against cold stone as the blackness continued to pour in, dripping even from the between the stones in the walls. It began to swarm over the figure, covering every inch of its body, into its mouth, its nose, its eyes, underneath its clothes. The figure made a piteous, half-choked noise of protest that was drowned out by the thing sliding inside it. Kurogane wanted to move, to do something, but his body didn’t even seem to be there at all. He was only a spirit, helpless to do anything but watch as the figure collapsed under the weight of the black thing and was utterly consumed.  
  
Darkness fell, and then he was in a long winding hallway. Light from a red moon shone through the open windows and there was blood on the stones at his feet. Someone was running through the hall ahead of him, bare feet against cold stone, breaths coming in short gasps. Shadows moved in the darkness around them, stretching towards the figure like long black fingers.  
  
The person skidded to halt in front of a large wooden door. The figure placed a trembling hand on the wood and the door swung open. The hall was suddenly bathed in bright light, obscuring Kurogane’s vision completely, and the air was filled with a single wordless cry of pain and grief.  
  
Then he was inside the room, standing in front of a crumbling throne. Torn tapestries fluttered behind it like fallen banners of war and there was a figure hunched among them, hands wrapped around its knees. Another figure sat upon the throne, its face obscured but hands an unmistakable black.   
  
“I can’t. You can’t—you can’t ask that of me.” There was someone standing at the foot of the throne, looking at the ornate sword in its hands as if it didn’t understand where the sword had come from.  
  
“I know.” The second voice was deep and weakened by illness. Though Kurogane could not see the face, he had the sense that the man was smiling kindly. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t apologize to me.” The first voice was twisted with pain and misery. “I--”  
  
“It wasn’t your fault. This was _never _your fault."  
  
“I only wanted to save--” The voice cut off with a choked sob. The silent figure behind the throne stirred briefly and then fell still. White hands clenched around the hilt of the sword and Kurogane suddenly noticed the deep black bruises all around the pale wrists.  
  
“You will. As long as it’s by your hand, you will. Everyone will be saved by you.”  
  
“But--”  
  
“Nothing would have stopped this. I saw it in my dream.” Kind eyes stared down at the miserable figure standing before the throne. “The choice you made, you made out of love. No one could blame you for this.”  
  
“I_ can’t—” _  
  
“I know. It will always be this kindness of yours that wounds you most of all [—].” Kurogane couldn’t make out the name, but he was sure one had been spoken. “I would not ask this of you if I could. I had hoped to be able to do this myself, but it is too late.” The man on the throne stared down at his black hands. “Quickly, before all sense leaves this body. Us, and all the rest of those outside--”  
  
There was a guttural, sobbing scream and the flash of a sword, and then nothing but blood.   
  
He was back in the tower. It seemed like some time must have passed — the smoke in the distance was gone, and the courtyard below was brimming with weeds. The once clean gray stones of the tower were worn with age and dust. Something still lay huddled in the corner, covered by a tattered black cloak. The only sound was the figure’s labored breathing.  
  
“Do you want to get out?” The voice came from nowhere, echoing off the walls. The figure in black barely moved.  
  
“I don’t deserve that.”   
  
“Oh?” The voice was amused. “Then what else could you want?”  
  
“I want--” The figure gave a heavy shudder and said something Kurogane couldn’t hear. There was a shiver in the air and he _heard _the bodiless voice smile.  
  
“Very well. That wish…I will grant it. But in return, you must do something for me.”_  
  
Kurogane awoke feeling stiff and sore. He was still sitting upright with Fai stretched out in his lap, silent and unmoving save for his hesitant breathing. Kurogane gently laid him to one side and stood, trying to regain the feeling in his arms and legs.  
  
They were still alone in the middle of the water, with no sign of anything living or otherwise around them. As he massaged his numb limbs Kurogane glanced back over at Fai. The blond’s condition didn’t seem to have worsened at all while Kurogane had been unconscious, but it hadn’t gotten any better, either.  
  
The visions had been strange this time. It wasn’t one of his memories, he knew that, but even as he thought back to it the images were already becoming fuzzy and indistinct in his mind, like a half-remembered dream.   
  
_Perhaps they were his, then,_ Erebus whispered to him.  
  
“Since when do you care?” Kurogane muttered.  
  
 _I was unable to escape this body last night._ There was a simmering resentment to the words that almost made Kurogane want to laugh.   
  
“Good,” Kurogane snorted. He paused, considering his next words. He wasn’t fond of conversing with the demon, but there was something he had been wondering about. “ _Is_ it different because we’re in the Underworld?”  
  
 _Is what different?_  
  
“The damn…possession, or whatever the hell we’re calling it.” Kurogane gestured towards Fai. “He said it was, but he couldn’t tell the truth if I strangled it out of him. The things I saw, last night and the one before, they were different than normal. More…real.”  
  
 _Perhaps,_ Erebus replied with uncharacteristic thoughtfulness. _The Underworld is a place different from any I have ever been to._  
  
“What does _that_ mean?” Kurogane demanded. “You’re a fucking demon, this should be the place you came from, right?”  
  
Erebus was silent and Kurogane gave a snort of disgust. That was what he got for asking the stupid thing questions in the first place.  
  
 _Ah, you’re still here, boy._ The voice made him turn as the boatman rowed towards the island again. It paused just out of Kurogane’s reach. _Still alive?_  
  
“For now.”   
  
_Have you considered my offer?_ The boatman nodded toward Fai’s prone body. _Sacrifice only that one beside you, and your life will be spared._  
  
“No.” Kurogane’s tone made it clear there would be no argument.  
  
 _Your funeral then,_ the boatman said with a shrug, a human gesture that seemed almost comical coming from a walking skeleton. _Literally, of course._ It began to row away again.  
  
“Wait.” At the sound of Kurogane’s voice the boatman stopped and turned to look back at him.  
  
 _What now, boy? I haven’t got all eternity to deal with the likes of you._  
  
“Fight me,” Kurogane said, hand on his sword. “If I defeat you, then you get us out of here.”  
  
The boatman stared at him for a long moment before bursting into laughter. It sounded like the rustling of dead leaves.  
  
 _Don’t be foolish, boy. I was killing your kind before your ancestors were even conceived. You will lose._  
  
“We’ll see about that,” Kurogane stated, drawing Ginryuu.  
  
 _If you insist, then._ The boatman laid down its pole and stepped towards the island. It moved through the water easily, as if it were only a puddle formed by the rain, black cloak remaining totally dry even though the edges dipped below the water’s surface. As it stepped up onto the solid ground of the island it reached into the cloak and withdrew a black sword that looked as if were covered in thorny vines. _But you must make a deal as well, boy. If you lose, that soul is mine._ It nodded towards Fai. _Will you still fight me?_  
  
“I will.” He had no choice. If he didn’t do this, they would both die. Kurogane prepared himself.  
  
 _Very well._ The boatman moved faster than the eye could see, and it took all of Kurogane’s training and reflexes to dodge the first blow that would have severed his head from his body.  
  
 _This was unwise,_ Erebus murmured quietly in his head. _That one is your better, human. Give up on that pathetic soul and let us leave this place. If you wish to die so much I will oblige you as many times as you like._  
  
Kurogane didn’t have the luxury of even thinking at the demon to shut up, too busy trying to dodge the next blow. The boatman’s movements were faster and more sure than even his father’s, sword strokes precise and powerful. It was only the power of the demon inside him that kept Kurogane from being completely overwhelmed.  
  
The boatman struck out at him again and Kurogane blocked the blow with his own sword. The black sword pressed down against Ginryuu and Kurogane felt his arms starting to shake from the effort of holding up his sword.  
  
 _A well-made blade,_ the boatman said, expressionless face staring down at him. _It does not crack, even against a blade forged in the Underworld’s flames._  
  
Kurogane only grunted in reply as he rolled away from the blow. Sweat was already running down his face from the effort of the fight and they had barely begun. The boatman seemed undaunted, approaching him slowly, black cloak billowing out behind him like the night sky.  
  
 _Give up, boy,_ the boatman said. _Give me that other soul and I will let you leave._  
  
“Drop dead,” Kurogane growled, raising his sword again. His arms were shaking still and the sword felt twice as heavy as it normally did, and there was only one last thing he could think to do.  
  
Without another word the boatman flashed towards him again. This time Kurogane did not dodge but instead moved _into_ the strike, allowing the sword to pierce straight through his stomach and out his back.  
  
 _Giving up already?_ The boatman’s previously flat voice registered only the slightest sound of surprise, its hands still holding onto the sword.  
  
“Not quite.” Kurogane smiled through a mouth full of blood as he raised his own sword and with a single movement severed the boatman’s head from his body.  
  
The skeleton’s body staggered backwards and collapsed into a heap of bones and rags. Kurogane fell to his knees, the black sword still lodged in his stomach. Blood was pooling on the ground beneath him and his vision was growing hazy.  
  
 _You fool!_ Erebus was raging at him. _If you die, we_ both _die!_  
  
“Idiot,” Kurogane muttered weakly. “I can’t die, remember?”  
  
Red closed in on the corners of his vision and consumed him.


	4. The Pain is What You Make It

_“You were not meant to endure this.”_  
  
He was back in Tsukuyomi’s temple in Suwa, standing beside his mother. His father’s body was lying upon the altar, covered in a white shroud. A second body lay beside it but the features were strangely blurred, like a bad photograph. Three candles set in front of the altar cast strange shadows on the wall.  
  
“What…?” The words felt thick in his mouth, like trying to talk through a mouthful of wool. The shadows beyond him were shifting, as if some great beast was hidden beneath them.  
  
“He was only trying to protect you.” His mother placed a hand on the altar beside where his father’s body lay. “He did not know it would end up like this. You will forgive him, won’t you?”  
  
The thing in the shadows moved, a dusty rustling of wings and scales. Ginryuu was in his hands again.  
  
“There was nothing I could do, either.” His mother moved towards the second body. “I could only give her my protection, and offer her warning of what was to come. If she could have, she would have killed them all to spare you. But my warning came too late, and her body was already too weakened. If she could have, she wouldn’t have left the final duty to you. So you will have to forgive me as well.”  
  
The features on the second body solidified and his mother lay there, as pale and unmoving as he last recalled her. Kurogane’s gaze rose to meet that of the woman standing before him. As his eyes met hers her features changed to an image he had seen his mother lying before in prayer many times.  
  
“Tsukuyomi…” He forced the words out and she smiled kindly at him.  
  
“You are the last of Suwa. We have never been far from you.” She reached out a hand to touch his forehead and Kurogane realized that he had fallen to his knees. “Listen. The darkness that destroyed the people of Suwa is not something that cannot be defeated. Those who died by your hand and his in that prison were saved. Those who died by your mother’s hand in Suwa were saved. Do you understand?”  
  
He didn’t, but he nodded anyway. Tsukuyomi smiled again.  
  
“You will, when the time comes.” She reached down and kissed his forehead. “There is one last duty yet to be asked of you. When the time comes, please choose well.” She looked away from him then and stared at the thing in the shadows. “And you as well, friend, fallen. These are debts we both owe. Pay them wisely.”  
  
Kurogane suddenly felt overcome by a heavy drowsiness. His eyelids slid shut and he fell forward into a gentle darkness.  
  
He awoke lying flat on the hard black stone, blood drying on his clothes. Kurogane sat up stiffly, his stomach feeling sore but the skin unbroken. Memory returned and his head shot up as he looked about wildly for Fai.  
  
 _Clever of you, boy._ Kurogane whirled at the sound of the voice. The boatman stood opposite him, whole and unmarked, black sword at its waist. Fai lay at its feet.  
  
“Get away from him,” Kurogane growled, picking up his fallen sword.  
  
 _We had a deal,_ the boatman said. _This is not a place where one can go back on one’s word lightly. I will take you both across._ The boatman turned away from him and went back to its boat, rowing it up against the island. Kurogane stared blankly at it, not quite believing. _Come on, boy. I will only offer this once._  
  
Kurogane stumbled forward, still feeling weak and slightly dizzy. His hands closed over Fai’s shoulders and he lifted the blond as he all but fell forward into the boat. Fai was shuddering lightly against him, black chain marks stained all over his arms and hands.  
  
 _It will fade, when you reach the other side,_ the boatman said as it rowed them forward. _But that won’t change anything. That one will not be made whole by it._  
  
“Shut up,” Kurogane snapped.  
  
 _I am only warning you,_ the boatman said, voice still even and untroubled. _There are things humans can never save._  
  
“Shut up,” Kurogane said again, wearily.  
  
He didn’t even know why he cared. Fai was not his responsibility, had never been his responsibility. They were practically still strangers, even now. But the memory of the smile on the idiot’s face as he’d stepped off the stair was still burned in his mind. It was the smile of a dead man, and it made Kurogane somehow feel angrier than anything the demon had ever done to him.  
  
“Idiot,” Kurogane muttered, pressing a hand against Fai’s forehead. The blond’s breathing seemed to be growing more even now and the fever had begun to fade. The chain marks on his skin were slowly draining away.  
  
When land appeared it rose out of nowhere, a deep dark cavern opening up ahead of them as the boatman rowed closer. The boat ran ashore on rocky ground, the same smooth black rocks that had made up the small island Kurogane had found.  
  
 _Follow the cavern to its end and you will be free of this place,_ the boatman said as Kurogane rose, still holding Fai tightly. _If you aren’t killed by anything. Good luck to you, boy. You may need it._ The boatman laughed dryly again before pushing off and slowly rowing the boat away. Kurogane watched until it had disappeared and then turned back towards the cavern. Darkness yawned back at him, lit sparingly by small blue lights lodged in the cavern walls, but there was no other choice. He stepped forward and let himself be swallowed by the dark.  
  
He had been walking for some time when Fai finally began to stir in his arms. He laid Fai down onto the ground and stepped back as the other man sat up dizzily.  
  
“Kuro…?” Fai’s voice was soft and far away. “What…? Where are we?”  
  
“How the hell should I know?” Kurogane said, trying not to let himself feel relieved. Why should he be relieved? The idiot was awake, which meant nothing but annoyance and stupid nicknames.  
  
“This is….one of the caverns that leads up from the Drowning Sea…” Fai pressed a hand against the wall. “How did we…?”  
  
“I got us out of there.” Kurogane glared down at him. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”  
  
“I thought you already asked me that.” The smile was back in place already, thin and stretched like a scar.  
  
“And you didn’t answer that time, either,” Kurogane said.  
  
“But if I answer you, you’ll hit me,” Fai said with an exaggerated whimper.  
  
“I _already_ want to hit you,” Kurogane snorted. “You don’t get out of this that easy. It wasn’t just the Stair. Before, back in the prison, when I almost cut you in half you just _stood_ there.”  
  
“Does it matter?” There was a clear forced lightness to Fai’s voice and he wouldn’t meet Kurogane’s eyes. “Haven’t you wanted to let it all end every once in a while, Kuro-sama?”  
  
“No,” Kurogane said darkly. “Maybe when I was a stupid kid, when I first got possessed…but not now. I’ve died too many times already. It’s not worth it.”  
  
“But you let the thing with the boat stab you,” Fai pointed out.  
  
“I thought you were unconscious.” Kurogane raised an eyebrow at him and Fai shrugged.  
  
“I was…drifting, mostly. But sometimes I woke up and you were there, you just didn’t notice because you were too busy being all romantic and broody.”  
  
“I don’t brood!” Kurogane snapped. “And that was different. I _can’t_ die, remember?”  
  
“Down here you can,” Fai said, eyes hooded. “The possession works differently down here. For all you know, you could have died by that sword.”  
  
“If I’d believed that, I wouldn’t have done it,” Kurogane said. “And I had to get us out of there somehow.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound like the Kuro-pon I remember,” Fai said ruefully. “I thought you didn’t do protecting, Kuro-rin.”  
  
“I wasn’t--” Kurogane stopped and Fai regarded him with thoughtful eyes.  
  
“Weren’t you?” Fai asked. “You shouldn’t lie, Kuro-sama. And you shouldn’t protect me. You’re better off worrying about yourself.”  
  
“ _You_ don’t get to talk to _me_ about lying,” Kurogane stated.  
  
“But it’s true, right?” Fai stared up into the darkness. “Even if you tell yourself you won’t do something, you still can’t stop yourself in the end. You still break that vow, every time.”  
  
There was a heavy silence between them.  
  
“I was given a task, once,” Kurogane said at last. “When my village was overrun by the plague. My mother asked me to save the rest of the villagers, even if I had to kill them. But after my father put the demon in me it overcame me. When I woke up, everyone in the village was dead.”  
  
“That might have been better.” Fai was facing at him but his gaze was elsewhere. “That wasn’t your fault, Kuro-sama. It was the plague and the demon. There was nothing you could have done. It’s not the same as failing with your own hands.”  
  
“No,” Kurogane said flatly. “It was my fault. I wasn’t strong enough.” He paused for a moment before speaking again. Ginryuu felt like a heavy weight at his side. “This time, I will be.”  
  
Fai started in surprise and his gaze seemed to find Kurogane at last, mismatched eyes wide and haunted. A sickly smile spread across his face.  
  
“That’s silly, Kuro-rin,” Fai chided. “I told you, I’m not worth that. You shouldn’t bother too much about me. If you do, something bad might happen.”  
  
“I’m not afraid of crap like that,” Kurogane said. “In case you haven’t noticed, bad things _have_ happened, and none of it has anything to do with you.”  
  
“Does it?” Fai’s tone was like a chill wind through dead branches.  
  
“Other than you being the idiot who dragged me down here,” Kurogane said. “And it was coming with you or being overrun by plague-infected…zombies, or whatever the fuck the damn plague turns them into.”  
  
“I believe the technical term is ‘walking dead’ Kuro-rin,” Fai said helpfully. His teasing smile was very nearly real, and Kurogane took him by the arm and dragged him forward.  
  
“Come on, idiot,” Kurogane said. “You know the way from here, right?”  
  
“Somewhat,” Fai said. “I think we need to just follow this tunnel. There’s really no other route anyway, right?”  
  
“Then come on.” Kurogane started walking. “Keep close to me. You haven’t got a weapon anymore.”  
  
“Of course.” Fai’s voice was as cheerful as ever, but there was a heaviness to his steps as he followed Kurogane down the dark tunnel into the unknown.  
  
—  
  
“How much further does this damn tunnel _go?_ ” Kurogane muttered irritably. They had been walking for what seemed like hours. He and Fai had already split the remaining contents of his pack and he didn’t even want to _think_ about how they were supposed to get back to the above world after they met the Lord of the Underworld.  
  
Assuming the Lord of the Underworld agreed to remove their demons at all, and Kurogane was beginning to wonder about the likelihood of that.  
  
“It can’t be far now.” Fai was trotting along behind him seemingly without a care in the world, not even so much as breathing hard. Hitting him was sounding like a good idea again. “I’m not really sure. The book I found that explained everything was vague, and we came by the longer route.”  
  
“What kind of book was this, anyway?” It occurred to Kurogane that he had not even bothered to ask before. “What the hell kind of book gives a damn _map_ to the Underworld?”  
  
“Oh, that.” Fai shrugged, utterly unconcerned. “It was a very old book, Kuro-sama. It was hiding with the old legends and fairy tales.” Kurogane stopped walking abruptly. “Kuro-sama?”  
  
“You’re telling me,” Kurogane said through clenched teeth, “that you dragged me all this way through gods-know-what using a map you found in a damn _storybook?_ ”  
  
“No,” Fai said with aggressive cheer. “I’m telling you I dragged you all this way using a map-like description I found in a nice dusty book of old legends. There’s a very fine difference, Kuro-rin.” Off Kurogane’s look, he added, “It’s been right so far, hasn’t it? Don’t worry so much! We’ll be there in no time.” Something in the words seemed to dull his mood slightly and the smile was just a little more fake than before. He skipped quickly past Kurogane without looking back.  
  
The small blue lights that brightened the tunnel were growing fewer and farther between the deeper they went until they finally disappeared entirely. They were replaced by strange metal lamps in the form of birdcages which hung from somewhere above them, each a different shape. Fluttering lights like butterflies were enclosed inside them, casting strange shadows along the cavern walls. The combination of light and shadow made Kurogane’s head swim and when Fai stopped suddenly ahead of him Kurogane was so distracted he nearly walked straight into the other man’s back.  
  
“Ah, careful.” Fai grabbed his shoulder to hold him back. They were standing just at the point where the tunnel began to curve and Kurogane couldn’t see anything ahead of them. “There. That’s where we want to be.” Fai kept close to the wall as he inched around the curve, pointing.  
  
Along the wall ahead of them there was an arched double door made of black metal. There was a red circle emblazoned in the center, encircling a strange black symbol that looked similar to a bat. Torches flamed on either side of the door and two statues stood on either side of them like a guard, each one dressed in black armor and holding a spear.  
  
“Then let’s go.” Kurogane started to walk and Fai grabbed him by the arm.  
  
“I don’t think it’s quite that easy, Kuro-tan,” Fai told him. “See the statues? They don’t like trespassers.”  
  
“So?” Kurogane shrugged him off. “I’m not worried about weak things like that.” He began to unsheathe his sword, then paused and glanced down at Fai. “You stay back here. You’re no help without a weapon. I’ll take care of them.”  
  
He began to step forward again and was once again stopped by Fai’s hand on his arm.  
  
“What now?”  
  
“I…” Fai chewed on his lip nervously. “Are you sure about this, Kuro-rin? We can still go back from here.”  
  
“What the hell are you talking about?” Kurogane said irritably. “This entire damn ordeal was _your_ stupid idea to begin with.”  
  
“I know.” Fai stared up at him, his mismatched eyes suddenly a strange and unnerving sight in the dancing shadows. “But can you really trust in that? Maybe I just brought you down here to be some innocent sacrifice to some Underworld Lord, just to free myself. Then what would you do?”  
  
“Did you?” Kurogane said calmly. Fai only looked at him and Kurogane snorted. “Don’t be an idiot. I’m not afraid of those things out there or any Underworld Lords…or you, either. Wait here.”  
  
Fai let go of him at last and nodded. A shaky smile wound its way onto his face.  
  
“I’m counting on you, Kuro-sama,” Fai said with a soft laugh, giving him a small push forward. “I’ll cheer you on from here, all right?”  
  
“That’s better,” Kurogane said. He stopped and looked back at Fai again. “I’ll get this over with and then we’ll go and talk to this Lord of the Underworld or whoever the hell he is. Together.”  
  
“Right.” In the dark Kurogane couldn’t quite make out Fai’s expression. “Together.”  
  
As soon as Kurogane stepped out into the torchlight the statues began to move stiffly, hands clenching on their weapons as they turned to meet his approach.  
  
“It’s about time I had something else to fight,” Kurogane said, smirking. “I was getting bored of all that walking.” He moved into a defensive stance. “Come on, then.”  
  
The statues began to move towards him. Kurogane smirked, raising his sword to land the first blow —  
  
—and something hit him hard in the back of the head, sending him reeling to the ground.  
  
“Wha…?” He tried to turn to look when he was struck again. Ginryuu fell from nerveless fingers as he collapsed onto the ground.  
  
The last thing he saw before darkness closed over him was Fai stepping past him, holding a blood-flecked lamp in one shaking hand.  
  
—  
  
Kurogane slept, and did not dream.  
  
—  
  
He awoke with a pounding headache. Kurogane slowly pulled himself into a sitting position, rubbing the back of his head. His hand came back flecked with dried blood.  
  
“That bastard…” Kurogane muttered drowsily, shaking his head to clear it. His eyes blinked groggily as he took stock of his surroundings. He seemed to be still in the caves of the Underworld, but this area was wide and well-lit. There was a single tunnel in front of him and another behind. The tunnel behind him led downward into pitch darkness, but the one in front sloped gently upwards and was made all of white, smooth stone. “Where the hell am I now?”  
  
 _This is a crossing of ways._ The voice was female-sounding and cheerful, and came from somewhere by his feet. Kurogane looked down to see a small white… _thing_ standing in front of him. It looked like some kind of mutant rabbit, covered in white fur and with a red jewel set in its forehead. Like with the boatman, Kurogane heard the words clearly though its mouth never moved.  
  
“What kind of thing are _you?_ ” Kurogane muttered darkly, unimpressed. It ignored him.  
  
 _You should make your choice quick,_ it said. _You can’t turn back once you’ve started._  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
 _The tunnel behind leads back into the Underworld,_ the white thing told him. _The tunnel up ahead leads to the surface world. Which one will you choose?_  
  
“I--” Kurogane stopped. “Wait. So that white tunnel takes me home?”  
  
 _That’s right!_ The white thing said proudly. _You just go straight up and you’ll be out!_  
  
“And this one leads back down.” Kurogane stood, staring at the dark tunnel. His hand idly touched the hilt of his sword and he realized that Ginryuu was back in its sheath. Erebus stirred momentarily in the back of his mind and then settled back into drowsy silence.  
  
 _You won’t get a second chance,_ the white thing warned him again. _This way is only open to you once. Whichever way you choose, you can’t ever come back this way again._  
  
“So if I go back down, I can’t get back up?”  
  
 _Not by this way,_ the white thing replied. It paused, and when it spoke again its voice sounded deeper and more mature, like a different voice entirely. _But that does not mean that there aren’t other ways, Kurogane._  
  
“How do you know my name?” Kurogane’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and the white thing just stared up at him in silence, inscrutable. Kurogane sighed and looked back at the dark tunnel.  
  
It had definitely been that idiot who had knocked him out, he was certain of that, though who knew what kind of stupid logic had made the moron do something like that. Kurogane wasn’t even going to _try_ to understand that. And there was no way to ask him unless Kurogane went after him and beat it out of him.  
  
Fai had not simply knocked him out and left him there. Fai had taken him here, to the way out of the Underworld, and had stayed behind himself.  
  
“Other ways out, huh?” Kurogane smiled to himself. “That’s fine then.” He glanced back at the rabbit creature. “White thing! You said this way leads back to the Underworld, right?”  
  
 _That’s right._ Its voice had gone back to the old bright tone. _If you follow the tunnel straight down you’ll end up right back where you were before._  
  
“Then that’s the way I’m going.” Kurogane began to walk towards the darker tunnel.  
  
 _Are you certain, Kurogane?_ It was the deeper, older voice again. Kurogane stopped but did not turn around. _Is that what you choose?_  
  
“Yeah,” Kurogane said with finality. “It is.”  
  
With that, he walked calmly into unknown darkness.


	5. we'll see how brave you are

  
He came upon the door sooner than he had expected. The torches were still there, flames shining brightly in the darkness, but the statues had disappeared. The door was wide open and Kurogane could see nothing beyond it but a deep impenetrable darkness. He unsheathed his sword and cautiously stepped through the doorway.  
  
As he crossed the threshold the air felt fuzzy and thick around him, like walking through a fog. The sensation lasted only as long as it took him to step through the door and then he stumbled forward as if something had spit him out. Kurogane turned to look back the way he had come, only to find that the open door had disappeared completely. There was nothing behind him but smooth black stone barely seen through hazy gray mist.  
  
“No way to go but forward, huh?” Kurogane said with a grim smile.   
  
_You should not have done this._ Erebus’s voice was oddly subdued. Kurogane ignored him and moved forward into the unknown, letting his senses guide him. The cavern he was in seemed unimaginably wide, lit sparsely by the same birdcage lamps that had decorated the tunnel. The only sound besides his own footsteps was the steady dripping of water off the knife-sharp stalagmites jutting down from the unseen ceiling. The air felt hot and stale, like being inside of a furnace. Ancient tapestries hung here and there from the walls, edges all frayed, each one bearing an image of black bat on a field of red.  
  
There was something glowing white in the distance and Kurogane found himself drawn towards it. As he got closer he could see that he had reached some kind of strange wide pool. It was glowing with a ghostly light and there were intricate patterns of silver dust etched into the floor surrounding it. There was a deathly chill emanating from the pool and Kurogane thought he could almost hear sounds coming from inside it, a steady hum of whispered voices. Against his better judgment he found himself stepping over the silver sigils and staring down into the depths of the pool, the shining dust scattering beneath his feet as he approached the edge.  
  
Haunted eyes stared back at him and Kurogane recoiled. There were _humans_ down there — hundreds of them, their forms white and indistinct, skin translucent like ghosts, faces contorted with expressions of pain and despair, their hands reaching out helplessly into the air.  
  
 _Souls,_ Erebus’s voice hissed in his mind. _Those are human souls._  
  
“The hell?” Kurogane stepped backwards. The faces were still staring up at him and there was something strangely familiar about them that he couldn’t quite place, something ancient hovering on the edge of a memory long clouded by decades of illusion and time. He could almost hear their voices now, a chorus of agony and pleas humming like an insistent buzz in his ears. “What kind of sick bastard would do something like _this?”_  
  
 _And this is the person you were going to ask for help,_ Erebus said mockingly. _Such wisdom._  
  
Kurogane opened his mouth to give a scathing reply when a sudden, horrifying thought occurred to him and he found himself looking back into the pool, scanning each face for a pair of mismatched eyes and a false smile. As he studied each face Kurogane began to feel more and more that there was something familiar about the trapped souls staring mournfully back at him and a chill crept along the back of his neck.   
  
Fai was nowhere to be seen and Kurogane let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He stepped away from the pool, even more determined than before to find Fai and get the hell out of here.   
  
As he backed over the outermost of the markings the silver dust suddenly swirled up around him like a hurricane. Kurogane barely had a moment to utter a curse before it solidified and wrapped itself around his arms and legs, serpent-like, forming itself into chains as it did so. Kurogane found himself forced onto his knees, Ginryuu falling from his fingers. He strained against the silver chains but even with all his demon strength they refused to give. He was well and truly bound.  
  
“I see we have an intruder.” A deep male voice rang out from the shadows. Kurogane raised his head and glared as a man came into view, dressed all in black and red. “Welcome, last survivor of Suwa.”  
  
“Who the hell are you?” Kurogane demanded, eyes narrowing. “How do you know me?”  
  
“You may call me Fei Wang Reed,” the man said with an exaggerated bow. “Lord of the Underworld. You should know me, yes? You were seeking me, after all. As to how I know you…how would I not?” He smiled and there was nothing like warmth in it. “You looked into the Pool of Souls? They should have been familiar to you.”   
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kurogane growled, ignoring the small voice in the back of his mind that told him the other man was speaking truly. There _had_ been something there, something he didn’t want to recall…  
  
“You haven’t even figured it out yet, have you?” Fei Wang’s smile was mocking as he stepped towards the Pool of Souls. The markings that had been smudged by Kurogane’s careless approach re-formed themselves beneath him as he stepped over them. “I have been looking for you for a very long time. The thousandth lost soul of Suwa.” Fei Wang glanced back towards Kurogane. “The souls that are trapped here are all your kindred, after all. All those humans who were killed by the plague of shadows…their souls have remained here, trapped, ever since that day.”  
  
“What….?” The thing that had been hovering on the edge of his memory finally became fully, horrifyingly clear. The woman who had sewn the tear in his mother’s best kimono, the fisherman who had let Kurogane ride on his boat as a child, the old couple who brought offerings to the shrine every morning…they were all there and more, all staring back at him out of hollowed eyes.  
  
A strange feeling prodded insistently at the back of his mind and Kurogane found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the Pool of Souls. There was something he was missing about all this. Something very important, still hovering just beyond his reach.  
  
“That is how the plague works, after all,” Fei Wang said. “All the infected end up here in my domain eventually. I’m surprised it took you so long to get here.”  
  
“I’m not infected,” Kurogane snapped, looking away at last from the lost souls.  
  
“Really?” Fei Wang raised an eyebrow, smirking. “I believe you are mistaken, Kurogane. It is not the same as the usual infection, that is true. That creature inside you is likely the reason why you haven’t come to me earlier than this. But make no mistake, you _are_ infected with the plague. You have been infected for a thousand years.” He stepped closer so that he was face to face with Kurogane. “I can see it inside you. It hasn’t killed you yet the way it should have, but that’s no matter. You are still the last ingredient that I have been waiting for so long to retrieve.”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, bastard,” Kurogane growled, struggling uselessly against the chains. He eyed Ginryuu but his arms were still bound tightly at his sides, unable to reach the sword.  
  
“I don’t suppose you do.” Fei Wang moved away, chuckling to himself. “There is somewhere I want to go, you see. A place where miracles may occur.” He stared off into the distance, a strange light burning in his eyes. “I have only been there once and have been denied any return, despite being more than worthy of it. Still, I did not despair. I simply sought a new path.” He looked down towards the Pool of Souls. “A thousand souls, bound by time and place, chained to the Underworld. Those were the components I required. The plague was a stroke of luck — a thing of the Underworld somehow brought to the world of the living, which binds itself to a person’s very soul and infects the body from the inside out. As those souls began to appear in my domain, I realized that fate had indeed smiled upon me. All I needed to do was be patient and a thousand useful souls would be mine. But in this, I was defeated.” He glared sharply in Kurogane’s direction. “I was missing one final soul. All seemed lost… until I became aware of one last survivor of Suwa, still living in the human world, still infected with the plague, dragged nightly into the Underworld and released back to the human world each morning, All I needed to do was lure you down here permanently and then at last everything would be set into motion. Once all the proper spells have been set in place, I will be able to open that door once more.”  
  
“How do you even know about the damn plague?” Kurogane growled, a sudden suspicion creeping up upon him. “Suwa, the prison….was that your doing, you bastard?”  
  
“Oh, don’t be so foolish, Kurogane,” Fei Wang scoffed. “I expected better from you than that. I am merely a collector of souls, limited in the scope of my interference with the human realm. No, the one who caused the plague that devoured Suwa, the one who infected your disgusting prison…that was none other than a single little plague rat, one who has been by your side for some time. He was the one who brought you to me, after all. Isn’t that right?” He turned as another figure emerged from the shadows.  
  
Fai stepped forward into the light, head down, tattered black cloak now clearly adorned with the symbol of a black bat on a field of red. Kurogane could only stare at him.  
  
“Surely you aren’t surprised?” The mockery in Fei Wang’s voice made Kurogane’s blood boil. The Lord of the Underworld ran a hand down Fai’s unresisting face. “This one has been my puppet from the very beginning. Who do you think arranged matters so that he would be sent to your prison? Who do you think informed him of the existence of one of the Doors to the Underworld? I admit, I did not expect to be so lucky as to find you living in the exact location of one of the Doors, but that was unsurprising. Though that demon of yours is clearly some low-ranking Underworld beast, it is still pulled naturally towards its home. It is only expected that you would someday end up in a place where you could at last enter my domain in body as well as spirit. I merely needed to send my agent to you to give you that last required push.”  
  
Fei Wang laughed and Fai flinched almost imperceptibly, head still down, eyes averted.  
  
“And now, at last, I have the final component I have been seeking.” Fei Wang gestured towards the shadows and two humanoid figures seemed to manifest from out of the gloom, dark-haired women with strangely forgettable faces that immediately reminded Kurogane of the man who had brought Fai to the prison in the first place. “I must complete the final preparations for the ritual. Take our guest and make him comfortable, so that he may savor his last moments with us.” The women stepped forward and took hold of the silver chains that held Kurogane bound, pulling him forward. Kurogane set his heels in resistance, but even the human-shaped constructs were somehow stronger than him. The two dragged him forward past Fei Wang, who smiled gloatingly at him as he passed.  
  
Fai did not even look at him, and Kurogane was carried away into darkness.

\--  
  
They left him in an empty cell made all of the same hard black stone as the rest of the cavern. The moment he was thrown inside sharp black spikes jutted down from the ceiling and rose up from the floor, forming bars to keep him held inside. As soon as the bars were in place the chains that held him abruptly disintegrated, becoming nothing more than a fine silver powder coating the floor of the cage. The women turned away from him without even so much as a second glance, melting into the shadows and leaving him alone in the dark cell.  
  
Erebus was laughing at him and Kurogane aimed an irritated punch at the bars. To his surprise they shattered immediately under the force of the blow, only for new bars to take the place of the old ones, nearly taking off Kurogane’s hand in the process. The sight of them only made Kurogane more annoyed and he pounded at them again and again, not caring that he was accomplishing nothing more than making his knuckles bleed. It made him feel slightly better, at any rate.  
  
 _And that is what you get for being such a trusting fool,_ Erebus snorted. _Betrayed, captured, sacrificed._  
  
“I didn’t ask you,” Kurogane growled, lying back against the far wall of the cell with an irritated huff.   
  
As the red haze in his head began to clear Kurogane found himself growing calmer. He took a deep breath and did his best to take stock of his surroundings in the dim light. The room the cell was in was mostly empty save for dust and some old bones piled haphazardly along the walls. There was only a single small birdcage light dangling from the ceiling but the longer he sat the more his eyes were becoming used to the darkness. Kurogane leaned back against the cold stone and watched the shadows play against the walls. Now that he was here, surrounded by darkness and silence and his own thoughts, some things were beginning to make sense.  
  
Kurogane looked down at his bleeding hands. Even in the half-light they were still the same as always, without any sign of the ashen coloring that first indicated infection.   
  
_His father holding him by the wrist, hands covered in ash and soot._  
  
Fei Wang had said he was infected. Though Kurogane trusted _that_ bastard as far as he could throw him, it would be foolish to assume the man was wrong. After all, the bastard’s entire plan apparently hinged on Kurogane being infected. But there were none of the symptoms, none at all. His hands were not black, his mind was still sane — or as sane as it could be, at any rate, with the demon inside him.   
  
And then there was the Pool of Souls itself…  
  
Kurogane had recognized the faces in that place, that he knew. The souls of his people were undeniably trapped there, had been trapped there for over a thousand years. He had seen them with his own eyes. But as he turned the situation over in his mind, Kurogane finally found himself able to grasp at the thing that had eluded him before: his father’s soul had not been there. It wasn’t simply a matter of Kurogane overlooking it. He knew, knew with every fiber of his being, that his father’s spirit was not trapped in the Pool of Souls, even though he also knew that his father had been infected with the plague at the end.  
  
Infected with it, but had not died of it.  
  
The sound of cloth brushing against the floor alerted him that someone was approaching. Kurogane looked up as Fai stepped into view, his golden eye oddly bright in the light of the single candle he held. They stared at each other in silence for a long moment.  
  
“Kindness is thrown away upon the evil,” Fai said said at last, a painful smile etched onto his face. His voice was uncharacteristically hoarse. “Why did you come back, Kurogane?”  
  
The use of the full name made him pause for only a moment.  
  
“Why did you let me go?”  
  
Fai’s hands clenched and he looked away without answering.  
  
“Why do you think I came back?” Kurogane continued, relentless. “I came back for you.”  
  
“You’re more mad than I am, then,” Fai retorted sharply. “I told you I wasn’t someone who deserved to be saved.”  
  
“Since when do I listen to you?” Kurogane snorted. “Idiot.”  
  
“If you’d start yelling at me, it would make this much easier,” Fai said darkly. “I betrayed you, after all. I’ve been betraying you all this time.”  
  
“And you tried to let me go,” Kurogane said.   
  
“I know.” Fai lowered his head. “You saved me, back at the Drowning Sea. I was only repaying that debt.”  
  
“Don’t give me that crap,” Kurogane said. “What the hell is wrong with you? You dragged me all this way, just to let me go for saving you when you didn’t want to be saved?”  
  
“You shouldn’t have saved me!” Fai said, suddenly angry. He smiled then, sickly and pale. “You realize it now, right? I’m the one who did it all. Your country, the prison…that was all because of me. I infect everything I touch.”  
  
“You weren’t anywhere near Suwa,” Kurogane said. “I would have recognized you.”  
  
“But I was.” Fai moved closer to him. “Do you remember how the infection started, Kurogane? Who the first one to fall ill was?”  
  
“What the hell does that…” Kurogane trailed off as memory came back. His mother, running from the shrine with bare feet, dragging him behind with her bag of herbs, called to tend to a man who had collapsed in a field. The man lying there in the dirt with lank hair and black fingers—  
  
 _—milky pale eyes staring out at him from the Pool of Souls, the face of that first victim frozen in a rictus of pain—_  
  
“One of the villagers,” Kurogane said dismissively. “But he was born in Suwa. You couldn’t have gotten near him without--”  
  
“Think harder,” Fai said.  
  
 _“He’s just returned from the mountains.”_ A frantic woman talking to his mother as they carried the man to his sickbed. _“He wanted to see what was left there.”_  
  
“He went up into the northern mountains,” Kurogane said. “There were supposed to be ruins up there, from some ancient country or some crap like that.”  
  
“Celes,” Fai interjected. “Its name was Celes.”  
  
“That country was destroyed before my ancestors ever even founded Suwa,” Kurogane said slowly.  
  
“I know.” Fai smiled again. “I told you I’d been alive longer than you, Kurogane. I’ve been alive so long, I don’t even remember my own name anymore.” He covered his face with his hands for a moment. “I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. Everyone in that country was long dead, so I thought that if I simply stayed there then nothing bad would happen again. But one day a person appeared, digging through the ruins. I stayed away from him as best I could, but that didn’t matter. Just being that close to me was enough. I could see it on him, as he left, that he was already infected. And even so…I let him go. I let him go and your country was destroyed because of it.”  
  
“ _Plague_ destroyed my country,” Kurogane said flatly. “Not you.”  
  
“Weren’t you listening, Kurogane? I _am_ the plague.” Fai laughed, the sound desperate and just a touch unhinged. “A plague that destroyed your country…and my own.”  
  
He stared deep into the candle flame and when he spoke again his voice sounded like someone lost in a dream.  
  
“There was a village in an ancient country.” The candle was reflecting shadows in Fai’s eyes as he spoke. “I don’t remember its name. No one living does. But in this village, there was a young woman, recently wed, recently pregnant. She went for walk in the woods one evening, that girl, and did not return home even though the sun had long set. The villagers searched for her, calling her name as they scoured the woods. They found her two days later. Her stomach had doubled in size and she was already in labor, though she had not been expected to give birth for months. It was a long and hard delivery, but when all was said and done she had given birth to healthy twin boys. Each had one blue eye and one gold.” He pressed a pale hand over his blue eye, as if there was something he could see with it that he no longer wished to look upon. “She named those children Fai and…and…” He shook his head. “I don’t remember the other. I erased it.”  
  
Fai’s smile was full of an ancient bitterness and his fingers played lightly with the candle flame..  
  
“The rumors spread like a wildfire throughout that village, about the birth of the cursed twins whose eyes were the eyes of a demon. Strange plagues followed on the heels of those rumors, crops drying in the fields, animals dropping dead in their pens, water becoming fouled and undrinkable. And when at last even the village children began to grow ill with a disease no doctor could name, the villagers decided they could endure no longer. They chased the girl and her children away from the village with torches and pitchforks, burning their house and slaughtering anything living that was found within. But even so, the mother escaped with her children, her demon-cursed children.”  
  
Fai paused for a moment and his golden eye was a bright full moon in the candlelight.  
  
“They fled the village and ran, ran as far as they could go. They stowed away aboard a ship bound for a faraway land beyond the sea. Three days into the voyage the sailors began to grow ill and they found the intruders hiding with the cargo. The mother and her children were dragged into the light and thrown overboard into the dark seas to die. But they did not die.” There was a deep regret in Fai’s voice that made Kurogane’s hands clench. “They lived. They washed ashore on an island with no name, and the mother led her children into the mountains on the island’s northern side. It was there that she died with her children by her side.”  
  
Fai closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing.  
  
“Mother had thought — had hoped — that the island was uninhabited, but she was wrong. People lived up in those mountains, people with fine fur cloaks and long dark hair. Fai and I tried to stay away from them. We knew, by then — we knew that all the misfortune that had happened was because of us, and that being near all those people would only lead to further misfortune. So we hid. We scraped and scavenged for food and ran away if anyone came too close to us. In that time we began to notice one man more than any other — a man with long black hair and the finest fur cloak, who always seemed to be near where we were hiding. Sometimes we would be hiding in the bushes and he would turn and look towards us, and then leave food lying on the ground behind him. We didn’t touch it. We couldn’t get close to anyone, not again.  
  
“It was my fault, in the end.” Fai shook his head. “The winter nights were cold and we couldn’t find any food. Every day it felt harder to get up, until finally one day I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. Fai shook me and called my name, but I was just too tired, I couldn’t reply. I thought that I would die there and then maybe it would be all right, maybe I would take the curse with me and then Fai could go live with those people with the warm cloaks. But Fai wouldn’t let that happen. He went and he found that man, the one we had never let see us before, and asked him to save me.”  
  
Fai’s seemed to have almost forgotten Kurogane’s presence, speaking as if compelled by something deep inside. There were shadows staining his eyes.  
  
“The man’s name was Ashura, and he ruled that small mountain kingdom. It was called Celes, he told us, and he wasn’t afraid of us when we told him we were cursed. He believed in things that were stronger than curses, he said. He took us in and fed us and gave us warm clothes and raised us as his own. He didn’t fear us. He should have.”   
  
“The plague was different, then. Animals grew sick, and children, but the people of Celes had intimate knowledge of herbs and remedies and managed to save many of the fallen. Ashura thought that would be enough, that we would be no danger once he was able to find the right remedy that would cure the plague completely. But as we grew older, things began to change.” Fai gave a heavy sigh that seemed to shake his whole body, like a winter wind through a dead tree.  
  
“It was because there were two of us. The demon…wasn’t supposed to be split in two like that. It didn’t have the strength to release the plague in its fullest form, but it did have the power to do…other things. It was weakest in me. People near me didn’t seem to get sick as quickly. But Fai…it just took him over, one day. Everyone who came into contact with him after that would come down with the shadow plague as you know it, and they would die. Only I could stay with him and be unaffected. And Fai had…changed. Sometimes he would be himself, be the Fai I loved, and sometimes he would be the demon. It would possess him and he wouldn’t even be able to talk right, would just keep…repeating things, old songs, nursery rhymes, and his eyes weren’t right. And then it would look at me and it—he—” Fai gave a convulsive shudder, unable to continue. When he spoke again, his voice was strained.  
  
“When he was himself, Fai saw the bruises and told me to stay away from him. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t let him face that by himself, locked away from everyone. And then one day the demon had him again and he—it was holding me down and it _spoke_ to me. Not in verse and quotes like usual. It didn’t even open its mouth. But I heard it.” Fai pressed a hand over his golden eye. “I heard it. It told me that it was dying. It couldn’t sustain itself like that, split in two. It told me that if things stayed that way, it would die and Fai would die with it.”  
  
Fai lowered his head, blond bangs covering his eyes.  
  
“I only wanted to protect him, that was all. The way he had protected me. I didn’t want to believe the demon, but as time went on I could see it. Every time Fai came back to himself he was weaker than before. He told me not to worry, told me I should go and be with Ashura and the rest of the people who cared for us, so I wouldn’t be hurt again. He told me he would be fine, but I knew he was lying. He was scared and he was going to die, and there was nothing I could do. So the next time the demon took him over, I spoke with it and I made a deal.”  
  
Fai went silent for a moment and Kurogane with sudden clarity remembered the dream from the night after Fai had fallen from the stair, of the figure in the tower and the black thing that had consumed it.  
  
“I took all of it,” Fai said quietly. “All of the demon that was possessing Fai…I let it have me instead. Outside of a human body it wouldn’t be able to sustain itself, but it could survive the transfer between Fai and myself because I already had part of it in me. I thought for certain that I would be able to save Fai that way. I didn’t care what happened to me after. I had planned to leave, to run as far away from Celes and other people as I could, to live by myself until I died and took the demon with me. But you’ve always been right, Kurogane: I am an idiot. I trusted a demon and everyone I loved paid for it. Even with half of its essence already inside me, I still couldn’t endure the possession. I lost consciousness and awoke to find Celes a land of the dying and the dead, overrun with the plague I had caused, fully formed at last.”  
  
He shivered slightly and pulled his tattered cloak closer.  
  
“I found Fai and Ashura in the throne room, as if they were waiting for me. Their hands were black with infection.”  
  
Fai met Kurogane’s eyes at last.   
  
“Do you know what they told me, Kurogane? They told me that they didn’t blame me, that it wasn’t my fault, that I hadn’t known. And then Ashura gave me his sword and asked me to kill them both, before the plague had fully taken over. He told me that it would save them, as if it wasn’t already too late. But what more could I do for them? I killed Ashura first, and he smiled at me to the end. Then I went to Fai and…” He shuddered again, half-choking on his own words. “Fai was still weakened from the demon but he was able to move nonetheless. He held me and kissed my forehead and he apologized. _Apologized,_ to me, to the person who had doomed him. And then he let me run the sword through his heart.”  
  
Fai’s entire body was shaking now, a convulsive tremble as if he might fall apart.  
  
“With my own hands I killed the two people I loved the most in all the world and they thanked me for it.” Fai shook his head again. “After that I went down into the heart of the country, killing every infected person I came across. Ashura asked me to. I couldn’t refuse his last wish, not when it was all my fault. I kept hoping that I would find someone, anyone, who was still alive and whole, but…nothing. The entire country had been ravaged. I could do nothing but kill them, and when I was done I went back into the palace and locked myself in the highest tower and stayed there. I hoped I would die there.”  
  
He raised a shaking hand and pressed it against one scarred ear.  
  
“That was when I heard them…the voices of the people of Celes, the ones whose deaths I had caused. They wouldn’t stop yelling at me, wouldn’t stop screaming in my head. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think. It was so loud thought I would go mad.” He smiled thinly. “Maybe I did. I don’t even remember now, what silence sounds like. No matter what I do, those voices will never be quiet.”  
  
“And that’s why you’re helping that Underworld bastard?” Kurogane said at last. “So he’ll take your damn voices away?”  
  
Fai laughed like a man walking to the gallows.  
  
“Why would I do that?” Fai’s voice was frantic now. “I _deserve_ to hear them. This is my punishment for destroying a country, for willingly letting a demon taint me. I don’t have the right to ask for this curse to be taken from me No…my agreement with Fei Wang was something different.” Fai smiled sadly. “He said he will let me hear them again.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“All these voices in my head…so many voices, but the two I want to hear the most I never can.” Fai ran a hand along the bat symbol emblazoned on his sleeves. “I had locked myself in that tower for so long I’d forgotten what any other voice sounded like, even my own. That was when Fei Wang spoke to me and made me a promise. I would go out into the world and find you, and in exchange he’d use his powers to let me hear them again.” Fai pressed a hand to his ears. “All these voices in my head, but I have never heard Fai and Ashura again. I don’t care if it’s only to curse me, to hate me, anything, I don’t care. I just—I just want to hear them again.”  
  
There was silence again, and this time it was Kurogane who laughed. Tsukuyomi’s voice echoed in his ears and at last he understood.  
  
 _“Those who died by your hand and his in that prison were saved. Those who died by your mother’s hand in Suwa were saved.”_  
  
“You _idiot._ ” He could remember it properly now. The words his mother had spoken to him before she had died, the words Tsukuyomi had undoubtedly spoken first to her and later to him. Why his father’s spirit had not been imprisoned in the Pool of Souls. “That guy, your Ashura. He told you to kill him, right? You really think he’d do that just to punish you?” Kurogane snorted. “I looked into the Pool of Souls. It’s supposed to be the place where souls who’ve died of the plague get trapped, right? But my father’s soul isn’t there, even though he was infected when he died… because the plague’s not what killed him. My mother killed him, and she told me to kill the remaining people in Suwa who were infected, the same order your king gave to you.” He stared evenly up at Fai. “My mother was a priestess. In her dreams she could speak with her goddess, so she knew things someone like you or me couldn’t. I don’t know if that Ashura guy knew these kinds of things or not, but I’ll bet he did.” _I saw it in my dream,_ the voice of the man on throne rang in his head. “The only souls that get trapped by the plague are those who die of it. Those who are killed by someone else, though, before the infection’s reached its final stage…those souls go wherever the hell souls end up. That’s why you can’t hear your king or your brother anymore. Because you _saved_ them.”  
  
“I…” Fai stared at him through haunted eyes, then shook his head wildly. “No. You don’t know anything, Kurogane. You shouldn’t even…” He shuddered hard, hand covering his eyes. “You don’t know anything. You should just hate me and forgot about me.”  
  
“I don’t waste my energy on hating morons,” Kurogane stated.   
  
“You hated your father, though, right?” Fai said. “That demon in you…that’s what keeps you from being fully infected by the plague. He probably did it to save you, the same way I tried to save Fai. And instead it failed and cursed you. I’m no different than that.”  
  
“I might have hated him, yeah,” Kurogane said. “But that was a long time ago. I didn’t understand things then, didn’t know what the hell was going on. But a lot of things have become clearer to me recently and I know better now. Someone who’s being protected without knowing it can’t understand the actions of the person protecting them until it’s too late. There’s no point in blaming either person for that. And if you’ve lived longer than me, you should know better than to keep dwelling on crap from the past.” He met Fai’s haunted gaze steadily. “A thousand years ago I failed to save the people of Suwa so I tried to blame everything on the demon and hide myself away somewhere where my strength wouldn’t change anything. I’m not going to sit by and do that anymore. If it’s in my power to save someone, I’m going to do it. Even if they’re an idiot who doesn’t want to be saved.”  
  
Fai stared down at him, face unreadable in the candlelight, smile wavering like a mirage in the distance.  
  
“Maybe we’re both idiots,” Fai said at last. He seemed to be fighting with something in his head and his eyes were staring at and through Kurogane, as if they were fixed upon something deep within the other man’s body. Fai stepped closer so that he was leaning against the bars, face to face with Kurogane.  
  
“What are you--” Kurogane barely managed to speak the words before Fai reached through the bars and pulled him forward into a kiss.  
  
It was sudden, unexpected, and Fai pulled away almost immediately. But Kurogane could feel a strange, fuzzy lightness in his chest, and the demon in his head went silent as a tomb.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Fai said, standing up and stepping away. His face had gone chalk white in the candlelight. “I didn’t want any of this.” He turned to leave and Kurogane suddenly recalled his dream of Fai’s memories again.  
  
 _”It will always be this kindness of yours that wounds you most of all [—].”_  
  
“Yuui,” Kurogane said and Fai’s head snapped back as if struck, eyes wide. “Your name was Yuui.”  
  
Fai stared at him for a long moment and then left the room as if running away, leaving the candle behind. Kurogane sighed heavily and leaned back against the back wall of the cell, one hand reaching up to touch his lips. He could still feel the lingering sensation of Fai’s warmth upon them.  
  
“We really are both idiots,” Kurogane said into the silence.


	6. A Demon's Fate

It was impossible to tell the passing of time in the dark cell, so Kurogane wasn't certain how long he had been waiting for someone to come for him when at last the blank-faced women reappeared from the shadows. He thought he must have fallen asleep at some point, because the candle was nearly spent by the time he was conscious of movement in the room. As the women approached him the silver powder that had remained scattered on the floor swirled up again, solidifying into chains that wrapped around his arms and held him tight. Without a word the women took hold of the chains and led him back down the dark caverns to where Fei Wang was waiting beside the Pool of Souls. Above it, held aloft by an extensive network of silver chains, was a strange construct that looked like an ornate double door made from hundreds of small sheets of paper. Crooked runes were scribbled along the bottom edge of the door in thick black ink. The silver markings that had surrounded the Pool before were still there and Fei Wang was just finishing the last of them as Kurogane was led in. Ginryuu still lay where Kurogane had dropped it, abandoned and ignored.

Fai was there as well, still cloaked in black and skulking in a dark corner, glazed eyes staring at nothing. He didn't even turn his head as Kurogane was dragged into the room and tied down between two rocky outcroppings that jutted up from the floor just inside the circle of spells that surrounded the Pool of Souls.

"At last, it seems the time has come," Fei Wang said, smiling as he approached Kurogane. "It is time for you to grant my wish."

"Die in a fire," Kurogane snorted, surreptitiously checking the strength of his bonds. The chains bit sharply into his skin, refusing to give even an inch.

"My, so rude, even to the end." Fei Wang chuckled to himself. "It will do you no good. You should be honored, Kurogane. If you are lucky, you may even catch a glimpse of it before your soul is consumed, of the place where miracles are granted." He stepped back to stand parallel with the hanging door. "After all this time…at last, I will see her once more." He slammed a palm against the floor and one by one the silver markings suddenly turned gold and began to glow. The color spread outward in rings from where Fei Wang stood, growing brighter and brighter until it reached the spot where Kurogane was held bound, a sacrifice on an altar.

The signs beneath his feet remained a dull silver.

"What?" Fei Wang took a step towards Kurogane, staring down sharply at the silver markings beneath his feet. "All conditions have been met. The spell cannot fail."

"Look closer." Fai's voice rang out as he got to his feet and strode slowly forward.

"I see nothing…" Fei Wang's eyes narrowed for a moment as he looked at Kurogane. He drew in a sudden sharp breath. "Impossible! You can't have…" He shook his head. "I see no sign of plague in you. How could a mere human such as you defeat that infection?"

"He didn't. I did." Fai moved closer, golden lights reflecting triumphantly in his mismatched eyes.

"You!" Fei Wang whirled. "You cannot-"

"It is my plague," Fai said. "And Kurogane's infection was not like that of any other person I've encountered. It hadn't taken root properly in his soul." At last Fai smiled. "I simply took it back."

"Your infection, was it?" Fei Wang seemed to disappear into the shadows, melting into the darkness with a speed Kurogane's eyes could barely follow. One moment he stood before Kurogane and then suddenly he was beside Fai and the blond was on his knees clutching at his face, blood dripping between his fingers as he held his hand over where his golden eye had once been.

"It was never your infection, my dear," Fei Wang said. As he spoke he held something aloft in one hand, the bloodied orb that had once been Fai's eye. In the lingering light of the half-finished spell it almost seemed to be moving.

And then it was moving, the dripping blood turning black and thick like tar, curling in on itself over and over again, growing larger with each movement, until the thing perched on Fei Wang's bloodstained hand was something resembling an enormous bat with a single golden eye.

"Foolish puppet," Fei Wang spat, glaring down at Fai's bleeding figure. Noting that Fei Wang's attention was elsewhere, Kurogane quietly tested the chains again and was gratified to feel them finally giving just slightly beneath his strength. "Believing so blindly. Did you truly think I was…ah, how did I put it before? A 'collector of souls'? That goes against the very idea of what a Lord of the Underworld should be. It is my job to send those souls on in peace, not to chain them here. For that, I needed to create something else, something that would bind them to me so that I could use their power to grant my wish. But there are limits in the ways a Lord of the Underworld can interfere with living humans. I needed an agent, an accomplice if you will. So I created my precious plague demon."

Fei Wang ran a hand over the demon's wings, like a proud falconer praising his bird.

"It was unstable on its own outside of the Underworld, of course. It needed a proper human host to truly exert the full strength of its powers. I had hoped that infecting the pregnant girl would allow my demon to take full control of the child, but fate was against me. She bore twins and that nearly ruined it all. Split in two, the demon could not maintain itself properly, could not spread the plague as it was made to do. If left alone, it would only corrode itself more, its power waxing and waning in fits and starts, drinking in the spirit of its own host in a desperate attempt to sustain itself — a phenomenon you must be aware of, as it is what affected your dear brother. It would all be a demon's futile death throes, of course. Or were you not aware? Once the worst of those fits of his subsided, my demon inside of him would have died and he would have been freed of it." Fai's head shot up, single blue eye wide and haunted, and Fei Wang seemed pleased by the look of utter horror that was creeping over the blond's face. Kurogane strained harder against his chains, a sudden sense of dread coming over him.

"You were so easily tricked," Fei Wang gloated, his attention only on Fai. "My pet was weakened so, it would not have been able to take over another human host unless one offered himself willingly. But who? What fool would so quickly agree to be taken over and violated by a demon? I had never expected to be so fortunate. If all had gone according to plan, the thousand souls of Celes would have been all I needed to grant my wish at last." Fei Wang's face darkened. "And then that king of yours ruined it. I can only trap the souls of those who die of the plague, their souls bound in chains of darkness and dragged into my domain. All those people you killed with your sword managed to escape me, leaving me with only a paltry three hundred or so souls trapped in my grasp. And what use had I for those? It was enough to simply set them upon you and leave you locked away listening to their voices, worthless to me, and I unable to recreate the process that brought my demon into being in the first place. It would be nearly enough to drive a person into despair…until a single fool from Suwa listened to a voice in his dreams telling him to explore the mountain ruins, to seek the treasure there."

The glowing symbols began to dim slightly and Fei Wang shook his head.

"Such a waste," he said. "I had hoped to keep you alive as a contingency. But it seems I am out of options. After all, I only need one more soul. A soul that was in proximity to Suwa…and infected with the plague."

As he spoke, he raised his hand and the form of the black demon began to change again, coalescing into a long black sword with a bat-shaped hilt. Fai looked up at him dumbly, still dizzy from shock and blood loss. Kurogane realized what Fei Wang had planned only a moment before it happened but could do nothing with his body still bound in chains, cursing his own useless strength as Fei Wang raised the sword high and brought it down, impaling Fai straight through the back.

"You bastard!" The cry tore itself from Kurogane's mouth but Fei Wang ignored him, staring down with some satisfaction at Fai as the blond coughed out a mouthful of blood, blue eye staring uncomprehendingly at the blade protruding from his stomach. With a single jerking motion Fei Wang pulled the sword out of Fai's body and Fai crumpled into a painful bloodied heap. Beneath the blood on his trembling fingers there was an unmistakable black stain beginning to spread.

"One soul is as good as any other," Fei Wang mused. The magic signs around him began to glow bright again, the color cycling from gold to red. There was a light haze like shimmering dust that was beginning to float around the hanging door and the clear white paper was darkening black as if someone had set a match to it, the color spreading out like creeping ink from the words scrawled across it. Fei Wang smiled and in a single contemptuous movement kicked Fai's limp body into the Pool of Souls.

"No!" Kurogane felt a wave of red anger shoot through him and suddenly the chains that held him broke into pieces, dissipating into silver powder as he half-fell forward onto the floor. Kurogane reached down for the abandoned Ginryuu as he advanced on the spot where Fei Wang stood.

"Oh, it's you." Fei Wang dismissed him as if he was nothing. "You are free to go now, of course. You are of no more use to me."

"Shut up," Kurogane growled through gritted teeth. "Stop this damn spell or whatever the hell you're doing. Let him go."

"Don't be a fool, Kurogane," Fei Wang said, slowly bringing the black sword up into a fighting stance. An eerily familiar golden eye blinked at Kurogane from the hilt. "Is that one lost soul really worth your life? He betrayed you, as I recall."

"Because you told him to," Kurogane said. "Because you tricked him."

"He was still a willing participant," Fei Wang said. "Nothing is going to stand in the way of achieving my goal, not now when I am so close. I will give you one last chance: leave now, and no harm will come to you. Otherwise, I will have no choice but to kill you. Nothing will change either way, you realize. The Celes brat, the people of your country…they will all still be sacrificed to fulfill my wish."

"I thought I told you to shut up," Kurogane snapped.

"Always violence," Fei Wang said, shaking his head even as he readied his sword. "If that is how you wish to do this…"

He began to melt into the shadows again, just as he had when he'd attacked Fai. Kurogane was ready this time and easily parried the attack, closing his eyes and letting his instincts take over as he raised his sword the moment Fei Wang appeared out of the darkness beside him. The black sword flashed out again and Kurogane dodged and deflected it, smiling grimly to himself. The Lord of the Underworld was good, that was true, but the man's skills were nothing compared to those of the boatman Kurogane had fought in the Drowning Sea and that, at least, was a good sign. Kurogane risked a glance out of the corner of his eye at the Pool of Souls. The ghostly glow that always surrounded the Pool was growing brighter, and the magic signs had transformed from red to blue. The paper door had solidified into smooth black stone and had opened just a crack, a thin sliver of bright light leaking out from behind it.

"You should pay attention to what's in front of you," Fei Wang taunted and the tip of the black sword suddenly changed into something thin and whip-like, flashing out to wrap itself around Kurogane's sword hand. He didn't bother wasting his breath with a curse as he was forced to drop Ginryuu and roll to one side to avoid being skewered by Fei Wang's next blow. The sword fell uselessly to the ground as Kurogane forced himself into a crouch, blood dripping from his injured hand. He had been cut in just the same spot where the scar still remained from when his father had placed the demon inside of him.

Open the cut wider. The sound of Erebus's voice in his head made Kurogane start in surprise. He hadn't heard anything from the demon in hours and even his earlier rage had been all his own, not tainted in any way by demonic power. There was something in the demon's voice that was different than usual.

"What—?" He barely got the words out before he found himself dodging another of Fei Wang's strikes, the black sword having transformed once again into sharp steel. This time the other man's sword came close enough to cut him lightly across the chest. Kurogane's quick reflexes managed to save him and he moved away, picking up his own sword awkwardly as he did. The demon sword was still restlessly changing form, the hilt curling its way over Fei Wang's wrist like some kind of contented cat.

You have no time to question, Erebus's voice came again, full of urgency. Your friend's soul will not hold out much longer. Widen the cut on your hand with the sword, quickly, at the spot where the scar is.

"If this is a damn demon's trick, I'll kill you myself," Kurogane growled low as he sliced his own sword over his palm.

"Doing my work for me?" Fei Wang asked mildly, approaching him with an air of forced casualness that set Kurogane's teeth on edge. "You are boring me."

Any intended reply Kurogane would have given was cut off as he felt a sharp spike of pain radiating up and down his arm. There was something silver dripping from his palm.

"What is that?" Fei Wang's voice was suddenly urgent. "This presence…" His eyes narrowed alarmingly. "Impossible! I saw inside you! That was only a minor demon, nothing more!"

"Perhaps." The voice reverberated in his bones and seemed to come from almost nowhere. Kurogane could only stare as the last shred of silver fell away and a humanoid figure began to form in front of him.

"Father?" The words tore themselves from Kurogane's lips before he could stop them. No, he realized almost as soon as he'd spoken. Not quite. There were clear similarities though, in the body and face and in the curling dragon tattoo that Kurogane would have recognized anywhere. The man looked back at him out of deep blue eyes and smiled sadly.

"No," he said, and Kurogane knew that voice. For once it was not twisted in rage and hatred, but still it was the voice he had heard in his head for a thousand years.

"Erebus?" he murmured, dumbfounded.

"Not quite that, either," the man said. "In a manner of speaking." He raised a hand and a sword seemed to materialize out of nothing. It was made of thin and bright silver, and the dragon on the hilt looked like an exact twin of Ginryuu. "I will take care of this, Kurogane. You have someone you need to protect, yes?"

Fai's tortured face flashed through his mind and Kurogane glanced quickly from the stranger to Fei Wang and then over at the Pool of Souls. The signs surrounding the pool had turned blue and the door was opening ever wider. There was no time to wait for explanations. Kurogane ran towards the Pool.

"No one will stop my wish from being realized," Fei Wang said. As he spoke the black sword began to transform again, the demon wrapping itself further up his arm and then reaching out to latch onto his torso as if the man was fusing with it. "Not even one such as you!"

"We shall see." The stranger's form was changing as well, growing larger and less human with every word. Something sleek and silver darted into the sky and the black writhing mass that was Fei Wang followed it.

Kurogane stared up at them, barely able to see them now in the darkness above the cavern. He thought he could see the shadows of something familiar, something with sharp claws and wide, expansive wings and a reptilian tail…

No. There was no time for this now, not when the door was still opening wider with every moment that passed. Kurogane readjusted his grip on his sword and dived into the Pool of Souls.

He wasn't expecting it when his feet hit what felt like dry land. He was standing in the middle of wide flat plane, surrounded by darkness on all sides. Souls floated like dimming candles in front of him, their already thin and ethereal forms growing less defined even as he stared at them, the once recognizable faces becoming blurred as if rubbed out by an invisible hand. Already he could no longer identify any of the faces he had seen when he'd first looked into the pool.

Kurogane reached forward and his hand met something barely seen and immovable, like a wide flat plane of glass that separated him from the floating souls. It was bone-chilling cold to the touch and he pulled his hand away with a hiss of pain. There was a frigid wind blowing all around him and the souls were moving in a strange circular fashion, as if caught in an unseen whirlpool on the other side of the barrier. Other than the wind and the muffled sounds of the battle above the bottom of the pool was utterly, eerily silent.

There was no sign of Fai and Kurogane moved quickly forward, eyes desperately scanning the area all around him. If Fai's soul was effected by Fei Wang's spell the way the rest of the souls had been the blond would be impossible to spot. He would be too late.

That was when Kurogane saw him, blood-splattered clothes standing out like a beacon amongst the white and gray of the other souls. Though the bloodstains were still red, however, Fai's body was already turning gray, the skin and hair leeched of all color. Even the stab wound in his abdomen had turned from red to black. The wound was bleeding sluggishly, as if somehow the Pool of Souls was affecting it. Kurogane ran over to him and pressed his hands against the barrier, ignoring the sharp chill that bit at his fingers. Fai was curled in a tight ball of pain, eyes closed and chest barely rising and falling with each shallow breath.

"Wake up, you damn idiot!" Kurogane sheathed his sword and pounded a fist on the barrier that separated them.

Fai stirred weakly and then his one remaining eye opened, the color still a bright blue. His other eyelid was covered in blood and shut tight.

"Kuro…gane…?" His voice sounded weak and curiously muffled, as if they were speaking to each other from either side of a door.

"How the hell do I get you out of there?" Kurogane demanded, pounding on the barrier again. When Fai didn't answer he slammed a fist right beside where the blond's head was. "Well? You know about this kind of crap, right?"

"You can't break it." Fai pressed a hand against his side of the barrier and Kurogane could see that his fingertips were still dyed black. "You aren't infected. It won't accept you."

"I don't want to be accepted or anything else like that," Kurogane snapped. "I want you out of it."

"You need to get out of here, Kurogane," Fai said urgently. "You can't be here when the spell completes, it will-" His words cut off with a sharp gasp of pain as another bit of color was leeched away from him. He seemed to float slightly backwards away from Kurogane as if carried by an unseen current. The souls around him were swirling faster, the black blurs of their mouths opened in a low moan of pain that reverberated throughout the pool. Fai winced and half-raised a hand towards his ear.

"I don't care," Kurogane said, slamming another fist uselessly into the barrier. From somewhere high above him Kurogane heard a demonic howl and the door opened another inch.

"You have to go," Fai repeated. "You're going to die if you stay here, Kurogane. The spell is nearly complete. You have to leave me here."

"Who the hell are you to tell me that?" Kurogane said. There was blood forming on his knuckles and his hands were beginning to feel numb but he kept slamming his fists against the barrier. "You bring me down here and then — idiot — you drag me away again and stay behind and you keep thinking I'm just going to leave you. The hell I'm doing that. Do you get it, idiot? I'm getting you out of here."

"Just leave me here!"With an effort Fai half-swam forward and once more pressed his hands against his side of the barrier. "Kurogane, please. I won't lose anyone else important, not again. Do you understand that? Why do you think I took the plague out of you, if I was willing to sit back and watch you die?"

"You took the damn plague from me because you're a stupid fucking martyr, that's why," Kurogane snarled. "That's why I'm getting you out of there so I can hit you and knock sense into your damn idiot head."

"You don't have the demon's strength anymore!" Fai argued. "Human strength can't break this barrier. It's no use, you need to-"

"If you tell me to escape one more time I'm going to cut your head off with my sword once I get you out," Kurogane interjected. "Don't you get it, you stupid moron? I already decided this. I'm not going to sit back and ignore things anymore. If there's something I've decided to protect, I'm going to do it. I'm not letting go of anything else." He slammed another fist into the barrier. Blood was beginning to seep over the unseen surface.

"Kurogane…" Fai's fingers reached out as if they could touch the blood. "I'm starting to think I should be the one knocking the sense into your head."

"At least we understand each other," Kurogane said with a grim smile. His fist hit the barrier again, but this time when he pulled his hand away there was something besides blood left behind: a thin spindly crack, barely seen, spreading underneath where he had hit the barrier.

"Impossible.." Fai clinically ran a hand along the crack from his side of the barrier. "It's—it's weakening."

"This entire damn place is impossible," Kurogane said, aiming another punch at where the crack was. The crack slowly began to spread across the surface of the barrier in front of them, an intricate spiderweb pattern as if the barrier was a half-broken window.

"I don't know what will happen if you break the barrier," Fai told him. His voice was ragged and breathless, and even as he spoke something seemed to be pulling at him from behind again, tearing his hand off the surface of the invisible wall. He grimaced and stubbornly pulled his hands forward to press them against the crack Kurogane had made. "It's not safe to stay here. If it breaks, all these souls will be set free."

"Good," Kurogane said, smiling. "Then I'll save them, too. Anything to wipe the smug smile off that damn Fei Wang bastard's face."

Above him something inhuman screamed. Kurogane glanced briefly upwards but all he could see were two enormous shadows flitting through the air. The door was nearly open.

Kurogane hit the barrier again as hard as he could and then bit back a gasp of pain as his hand broke through at last, splinters of clear glass breaking free and digging into his arm deep enough to draw blood. The part of his arm that was beneath the barrier immediately felt heavy and numb, as if there was a block of ice attached to his shoulder. The souls around him seemed to shudder and then suddenly swirled away from where he was standing, like leaves stirred up by a harsh wind. Fai gave a sharp gasp of pain as he was pulled roughly away from the barrier, one hand flinching back to touch his sluggishly bleeding wound. A thick clear liquid was dripping slowly out of the hole Kurogane had made and it made his arm burn where it touched his skin. Even so Kurogane pressed himself up closer against the barrier, ignoring the way the broken edges of the crack sliced at his skin as he forced the rest of his arm through the hole. He reached out his hand towards Fai.

"Take it," he told Fai. "Let's get out of here."

"You can't get us both out of here," Fai said, hands at his sides, staring down defiantly at Kurogane out of one blue eye. He seemed to be having some trouble speaking and the souls around him were swirling in an agitated manner. There was blood flecked on the corner of his mouth.

"Then we stay here together," Kurogane said, meeting that gaze steadily. "I'm not leaving you behind. I don't care what you say, what you've done, any of that crap. You're coming with me." He grit his teeth and slammed his other fist down on the barrier as he tried to reach his arm out farther. "Either we go together, or we don't go at all. Do you get understand, you idiot?"

Fai held his gaze for a moment longer before shaking his head, a small weak smile spreading over his face.

"When you say it like that, Kuro-rin, I don't know how I'm supposed to refuse you." He steeled himself and in one movement forced himself forward, reaching for Kurogane's hand.

Suddenly the souls around him swirled away again and Fai cried out in pain as he was pulled back by the invisible current. Kurogane couldn't bite back his own grunt of pain as the current pulled at his arm, nearly wrenching it out of its socket. Fai's blue eye was impossibly wide and he was saying something Kurogane couldn't hear over the sudden rush of sound, as if he was standing in the center of a whirlpool. The souls around him were screaming and Fai suddenly fell back in a protective stance, hands going up reflexively to cover his ears.

"Come on, you idiot!" Kurogane yelled at him over the roar of the crying souls.

Fai's eye met his and the blond's face grew grimly determined as he fought against the force pulling him away, trembling hands moving away from his ears as he reached out desperately for Kurogane's slammed his other fist against the barrier and suddenly he felt something give under his fist.

Above them there was another cry, high and keening like the death knell of some great beast, and something large fell heavily to the floor. The sigils glowing around the Pool of Souls flashed suddenly white-hot and the souls around them began to glow brighter and brighter as the doorway above burst into dust.

There was the sound of shattering glass and Kurogane felt Fai's fingertips brush against his as his vision was drowned by white.

\---

He awoke with a heavy weight on his chest. Kurogane slowly pulled himself into a sitting position, rubbing at his eyes with one hand and blinking wildly to dispel the spots that clouded his vision.

He was sitting in a room, or at least a place he assumed was a room. There were no visible walls or roof, nor even a floor. To his left as far as the eye could see there was only white, while on his right there was just black, both stretching out into infinity beyond him. There were objects that appeared to be furniture scattered here and there, a white couch, a black chair. They sat upon nothing and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to their placement: the couch was sitting a good foot and a half above where Kurogane himself lay while the chair was slightly lower, yet there was no indication of any kind of sloping floor. Everything was simply there, floating in a space of its own creating, as if the rules that applied to the normal world had no function here.

Something stirred in Kurogane's lap and he looked down, realizing with a start that Fai was lying there. One hand was pressed weakly against the stab wound in his abdomen, which appeared to have stopped bleeding for the moment, and the color had returned to his features. The black stains on his fingers were still there. Kurogane pulled him close, looking wildly for any sign of life.

"Kuro…pon…" Fai's eye fluttered weakly open and he managed to give Kurogane a shaky smile. "The light…hurts, a bit."

"You'll get used to it in a minute," Kurogane said, adjusting his grip so that Fai could see better. "Where the hell are we?"

"Not sure," Fai murmured, eye closing briefly in pain as he tried to move. "I-I can't see quite right. Give me a minute."

"This is the Infinity Room." The new voice made Kurogane's head snap up even as he pulled Fai protectively closer. Some feet away from him a door opened up from nowhere to reveal a human figure. It looked like a teenage boy in glasses, holding a tray of tea and descending black stairs that unfolded beneath him as he went. He was smiling calmly, as if bleeding strangers appearing out of nowhere was a normal occurrence. A black butterfly fluttered around him, coming to rest of the edge of the white couch. Kurogane stared at the boy for a moment, trying to recall where he'd seen that face before.

"You!" Memory came surging back to him. "You're the bastard in glasses that sent me to work at that damn prison!"

"Yes, that was me." The boy set the tea down on a table that had appeared out of nowhere. "It's good to see you again, Kurogane. My employer thought you'd find the job useful."

"Useful," Kurogane repeated grimly. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the boy. "Employer?"

"The mistress of the Infinity Room." The voice came from the direction of the butterfly and as Kurogane turned it suddenly disappeared and a woman sat there lounging on the couch, clad in an ornate black dress adorned with white butterflies, smoking idly from a long black pipe. "You may call me Yuuko." She turned her eyes towards the boy. "That will be enough for now, Watanuki. We have other guests who will need your attention."

"Of course." The boy in glasses bowed briefly to her and then disappeared back up the stairs. Yuuko turned to regard Kurogane calmly, eyes and expression unreadable. There was something about her voice that had been familiar, and it took Kurogane a moment before he was able to place it: it had been the second, deeper voice belonging to the white rabbit-thing he'd met at the crossing of ways.

"Is someone going to tell me what the hell is happening?" Kurogane said warily. In his arms Fai suddenly began to laugh, the sound half-choked by blood.

"This is where he was trying to go, isn't it?" Fai managed to drag himself into a sitting position. "The place where wishes can be granted."

"Correct." The woman, Yuuko, took a long puff on her pipe.

"Then it worked?" Kurogane said slowly. "The damn bastard made his wish come true and destroyed all those souls? Then how the hell are we still alive?"

"That man's plan did not work," Yuuko said severely. "The Infinity Room is a place that can only be visited once."

"But we're here," Kurogane said.

"And Fei Wang is not," Yuuko said with a mild shrug. "You two, on the other hand, have never been here before. And you won't be again."

"Then you granted him a wish once," Fai said. "Am I correct?"

"You are." Yuuko nodded. "Once, long before either of you were born, there was a human man obsessed with death. In time, he began to fall in love with the very idea of it and he came upon a thought: what if he could become a lord of death? Surely that would be the greatest power of all. So he searched and searched until at last he found himself here. He asked me for a wish, and I told him the price it would require." She blew a ring of white smoke into the air. "I warned him to choose his wish wisely. I told him there would be no second chance, so if he were to wish, he should make a wish that would leave him with no regrets. But in his arrogance, that man refused to listen. And when he found that his wish was not what he thought it would be, he tried to summon me again. But that is impossible. A heart's desire is something that can be bought once, and only once. If the wish is squandered there is no changing it. To do so would be to break the very fabric of the world." She turned to face Kurogane. "Well, Kurogane of Suwa? What is your wish?"

"Mine?" Kurogane repeated dumbly.

"You would not be here if you didn't have a wish," Yuuko said with a languid smile.

Kurogane's eyes immediately slid down towards Fai's blood-stained clothes and black hands.

"No," Fai said, too quickly. He would not meet Kurogane's eyes and he was half-covering the wound with one hand as if trying to hide something.

"I didn't even say anything yet," Kurogane snapped.

"You don't know what you're asking, Kurogane." Fai's voice was final. "Trust me this time. You can't pay that price."

"What the hell are you talking about? It's not-"

"You've noticed?" Yuuko's question was directed at Fai, who looked away but nodded nonetheless. "This is a place that exists outside of time. As long as you are here, you will remain in the state you were last in."

"Meaning?" Kurogane could feel a sense of dread creeping over him.

"Meaning that as soon as we leave here, this wound will bleed out while the plague takes me over," Fai said quietly. "You should know about this, Kurogane." He stared at his black hands as if they belonged to someone else.

"That wound is mortal," Yuuko said gravely. She met Kurogane's gaze evenly. "No wish comes free. You must pay a price equal to its asking…and make no mistake, Kurogane, what you are asking for is a life."

"It's still my wish," Kurogane said, unmoved. Fai grasped his arm tightly.

"No," he said stubbornly. "Kurogane-"

"I don't care!" Kurogane snapped and Fai flinched slightly. "I told you, idiot. I'm not letting you die. Not before, not now." He turned back to Yuuko. "Save him. That's my wish."

"There is price." Yuuko's voice was calm and matter-of-fact.

"Fine," Kurogane said. "I'll pay it."

"The price for a life is steep."

"What about a thousand years of deaths?" A new voice spoke up before Kurogane could. He turned to look as the boy with the glasses suddenly appeared, leading another figure through the unseen door. The newcomer descended the steps calmly to stand before Kurogane.

It was the human-shaped thing that had appeared out of nowhere to fight Fei Wang Reed, the thing that looked almost like Kurogane's father. In the brightness of the Infinity Room the differences were more pronounced — the face seemed younger and less battle-weary, and there was a streak of silver in its long black hair. There was something in that face that made Kurogane stare, trying to recall where he had seen it before. At first he'd dismissed it as simply seeing the ghost of his father in the stranger's face, but now he felt that it must be something else, something that was hovering just on the edge of his mind.

He found himself thinking suddenly of his mother's shrine and then it came to him. The tapestry that had hung on the wall, the one that featured the two guardian gods of Suwa. The goddess of the moon, Tsukuyomi—

—and the dragon god of protection, Ginryuu.

Ginryuu stood before Kurogane for just a moment before falling to his knees in a deep bow.

"I fear all my apologies can never be enough for the pain I have caused," the dragon god said in low tones that were unmistakably the same as the demon Erebus but no longer twisted with rage and bloodthirst. "This is the least I can do to repent."

"Wait a damn minute," Kurogane sputtered. "You' re…"

"Ginryuu," the man said. "And Erebus, as well. Two sides of the same coin."

"What the hell is going on?" Kurogane muttered, staring.

"Long ago I made a pact with the people of Suwa," Ginryuu said, standing up stiffly and Kurogane suddenly noticed the blood on the god's hands. "That I would protect them and keep them safe. To this end, my spirit has been passed down among your ancestors, sealed into the soul of the one designated as Guardian of Suwa. The last of these was your father." Ginryuu's eyes lowered and Kurogane was surprised to see the grief in them. "When the plague came, only those protected by the two gods of Suwa were spared. Your parents hoped to be able to pass this protection on to the people of Suwa, but that was impossible. Only my vessel and Tsukuyomi's priestess had the divine power needed to hold off the plague. When you fell ill, your father chose to sacrifice his own protection in a last attempt to save you. I agreed to his plan." Ginryuu shook his head. "But there are things even gods cannot predict. You were already infected when my spirit was transferred into you, and your father hoped that despite this my presence would be enough to cancel out the effects of the plague. What happened instead, no one could have predicted. The plague was purged from your soul, yes, but instead of leaving you whole it infected my own spirit instead, twisting me into the demon of destruction you called Erebus and leaving you with the curse of a dying a million deaths without rest."

"So that's why the Underworld bastard said I was still infected," Kurogane realized. "Because of you." A thought struck him and he glanced down at Fai, who was taking everything in with no visible sign of surprise. "You! Did you know?"

"I suspected," Fai said with a shaky smile. "I could tell that it wasn't a normal demon. That night I was in your room, when the demon clawed its way out of you, I was able to see the signs of plague clinging to its body. It should have been impossible for a true demon of the Underworld to be infected by the shadow plague."

"And because I was neither human nor demon, the plague was not attached to my soul the way it would have been to that of a normal human," Ginryuu said. "Once the infection was taken from me it took some time to return to my true self or else I would have tried to intervene sooner. As it was, defeating Fei Wang Reed took much of my strength."

"Wait," Kurogane said. "How the hell did you get rid of the infection?"

"Silly Kuro-rin." Fai was the one who answered. "How do you think?"

The memory of the night in the cell and Fai's lips on his came rushing back, and Kurogane looked away to cover the sudden flush in his cheeks. Fai gave a small laugh that ended in a quiet whimper of pain, reminding Kurogane that there were far more important things to worry about. He looked back over at Yuuko, who was watching them impassively. Ginryuu followed his gaze.

"Is that sufficient payment, Mistress of the Infinity Room?" the dragon god asked. "The thousand years of nightly death that Kurogane has endured from my presence…that is more than enough to pay for a life, I would think."

Yuuko nodded.

"The payment is accepted." She blew on her pipe and a ring of smoke curled around her fingers. She was still watching Kurogane and Fai with interest. "And you, Fai of Celes? You have a wish for me as well, do you not?"

Kurogane's eyes widened in surprise as Fai painfully pulled himself off of Kurogane's lap and limped forward to stand before Yuuko. His blue-eyed gaze was still filled with pain but when he spoke there was no weakness in his voice.

"The trapped souls of Suwa. What happened to them?"

"They were freed when Fei Wang's spell failed," Yuuko told him. "They have moved on to where they should have gone all along."

"And-" Fai half-raised a hand to his ear, winced and lowered it again. "And the souls he managed to trap from Celes?"

"They were held in a cage apart from those of Suwa," Yuuko said. "Those voices still ring in your ears, so you should already be aware of this. They are trapped in the Underworld and will remain so until a new Lord comes to take Fei Wang's place, should that one choose to release them."

"Set them free," Fai said. "I don't care what the price is. Set them free."

"You idiot!" Kurogane grabbed him by the arm, ignoring Fai's sudden grimace of pain. He didn't care how tight his grip was, as long as he could hold tight enough to keep the blond from doing another stupid, suicidal thing. "How many times do I have to beat it through your skull? I'm not letting you do this."

"Please, Kurogane." Fai's voice was surprisingly light and there was no pain in his smile. "I'm not doing this because I want to die or anything like that. I'm not giving up. But this is something I have to do. You protected the things you promised to protect. I want to do the same."

Kurogane stared at him for a long moment and then finally let go of his arm.

"Fine." Kurogane faced Yuuko again. "I'll pay the price too."

"Kurogane-"

"We can pay the damn thing together, right?" Kurogane said sharply. Fai looked about to protest, then shook his head in surrender.

"What will I do with you, Kurogane?"

"I don't want to hear that from the likes of you."

"There is no need for this." Ginryuu stepped over to join them, bowing low before Yuuko. "The price…allow me to be the one to pay it."

"You know the terms?" Yuuko asked. "You will not be a god of protection anymore."

"I know," Ginryuu said. "But only one of my people remains and I believe he will survive well without me." He looked over at Kurogane and smiled, looking enough like Kurogane's father that it made Kurogane's breath catch in his throat. He looked away with a snort to cover the sudden onslaught of emotion and Fai's hand brushed lightly against his.

"Very well, then." Yuuko touched Ginryuu's hand with her pipe and Ginryuu's silver clothes began to darken to black. "In order to free the trapped souls, you will take Fei Wang's place as Lord of the Underworld. Will you still pay?"

"I will." Ginryuu straightened.

"Then all wishes have been granted." Even as Yuuko spoke Kurogane suddenly felt slightly dizzy. The room seemed to be dimming before his eyes and he fell weakly onto his knees, Fai falling down beside him. As darkness covered everything he thought he heard Ginryuu's voice.

"Farewell, last child of Suwa. Live on, and be happy."

\---

Kurogane was getting tired of waking up in strange places. He blinked his eyes against the sunlight as he sat up and took stock of his surroundings. The stark white and black of the Infinity Room had faded away and he was sitting in the middle of what looked to be a flower-filled meadow. The sun was shining brightly above him and a cool wind blew by. There was the slightest scent of smoke on it and Kurogane could see a spot in the far distance that suggested he was not too far from civilization.

He noticed then that he was alone and Kurogane quickly stood, immediately looking around for Fai. His gaze landed on the blond sitting a few feet away, back turned and face staring up at the sky. He didn't turn as Kurogane walked up beside him.

"It's quiet," Fai said softly. His clothes were still stained with blood but the wound in his stomach seemed to have healed without a trace and the black was gone from his fingers. He smiled up at Kurogane with both eyes open, his left eye colorless and blind. "It's quiet, Kuro-sama." He touched a hand to his ear. "It hasn't been quiet for so long…"

Kurogane nodded in understanding. The voice that had been swimming in the back of his head for a thousand had gone silent at last. In some ways it felt strange, as if he was missing a part of himself, but it was a feeling he was thankful to have. For the first time in a thousand years, all his thoughts and feelings were his and his alone. He touched a hand against the hilt of his sword, running his fingers over the carving of the dragon. The last of Suwa, and yet somehow this time that did not feel quite so lonely.

"What will you do now?" Fai was looking at him again. Kurogane shrugged.

"I'm not going back to the damn prison again, that's for sure," Kurogane said. "Even if it's still standing. I'll find something to do, I guess. I'm mortal now, anyway. So are you."

"I know." Fai held up a hand in front of his face as he stared up towards the sun. "It feels strange. It's been so long since I felt…human."

"Idiot," Kurogane snorted. "You were always human." He sighed heavily. "Let's get going. I'm not spending all day in this stupid field."

Fai blinked at him curiously.

"You're coming with me, right?" Kurogane looked pointedly away from him, trying his best to sound nonchalant as he held out a hand to help Fai up. Fai looked surprised for a moment before a smile found its way onto his face.

"When you put it like that, Kuro-sama, how could I refuse?"

Fai reached up and took Kurogane's hand.


End file.
